PACU words of wisdom.

[beachlove]

Hello fellow RN's,

I am looking for advice/words of wisdom pertaining to your experience working in PACU. I currently work in ER and I am thinking about changing units. PACU requires weekend/holiday on call rotations. I am not familiar with being on call as my schedule is three 12 hour shifts, 1 weekend a month and 2 holidays/yr. So pretty straight forward. What has been your experience with on call? Anyone change from ER to PACU? What do you think about working there?

Thank you so much

[brownbook]

I don't know why no one has responded. Seems like a perfectly good, easy to answer, question.

I never worked ER, I occasionally floated there. My PACU and ER acute care experience was in a smaller county hospital. I really like PACU nursing. Except for call coverage PACU can be a Monday to Friday no holidays job.

When I worked acute care PACU and call was assigned, several crazy co-workers would argue over whose turn it was to take my call. They loved the extra money, I was glad to give it up. I didn't like being on call, it was hard to "forget" that I could be called into work at any moment.

When I occasionally took call I never had any awful experiences, for example being called in, working 6 - 8 hours that night, then being expected to work my regular shift the next day.

OR's are very specific about how soon after they call you must be at the hospital. You usually can't live more than thirty minutes away.

When you interview get in writing how many hours you are expected to work call and still come in for your regular shift the next morning, how to request not being assigned call on a specific date, how many days a week or month you can be expected to be on call, etc.

[beachlove]

Thank you for the advice. I went to the interview and they require on call every 3rd Saturday and Sunday plus expect you to work your full shift if scheduled the next day. I think I will pass. I don't function well without sleep lol.

[offlabel]

I'll chime in. Things to avoid:

Giving more oxygen to a post anesthesia patient who's O2 sat is falling.

Putting intraoperative blood pressure into the context of the PACU setting (they're unrelated).

Waking a patient up to ask him how much pain he is in.

[HeySis, BSN, RN]

We take call about once a week and if you're scheduled the next day you are expected to be there. If they are overstaffed in anyway, the nurse that was in after 12 midnight on call has the option to go home first. (if you were on call but were not called in or went home before midnight, it's not always you home first).

I don't mind taking call, just because hours can get cut and call is a great way to make up hours. But I'm also glad that taking call two days in a week is a pretty rare thing for our unit.

[RainMom]

We take call once during the week, every 9th weekend & one holiday. Often, we are scheduled the day after call, but are the first to come in & first to leave. Post-call nurse also is first to be offered low census on a slow day.

I work in a small hospital & went from three 12s on the floor to 3-4 8hr shifts (which could actually be anywhere from 4-12+ hrs). I kind of expected that the call time would make up for the decrease in scheduled hrs, but it doesn't most of the time which is why I still pick up prn floor shifts.