Pls tell me this is common in your Hospital!!!

[SurvivorRN]

Im a little frustrated. Ive been in the ICU at a different hospital for about 4 months. Ive been put on call so far about 5 times. They expect you to use ur own vacation time , personal holiday or u dont get paid at all, so instead o ur 36 hours, u gt stuck with 12 or 24 hours a week. My old job never had this issue. Its just really upsetting. Some people have started to leave. Im hoping to stick it out a year, then im out. Im looking for another float pool job as I type. The bad part is that u are on call till 3.30pm. So u sit by the phone and ur whole day is wasted. I'm I being to premature in my emotions? Is this common? Overtime is out of the question!

[WalkieTalkie, RN]

Well, had another night of "on-call" last night. $1.75/hr. Blah. Oh well, I've picked up so many extra hours over the past couple of weeks that I won't need to use any PTO to make up for it. It's feast or famine at my hospital!

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

Jeez, where are you guys located that you get called off all the time like this. I'm a travel nurse, and I just had a hospital that I finished with almost a week ago call and ask if I'd pick up hours with them. Unheard of.

Just asking. Sorry its like that for you. Hope things get better.

[WalkieTalkie, RN]

Jeez, where are you guys located that you get called off all the time like this.

As I said, feast or famine. I'm in Omaha. Honestly, three days ago we were completely chock full. Now we are overstaffed. Last week I was getting paid bonus to come in extra, this week it's the opposite. I think the reason is mostly due to a lot of our cardiac surgeons leaving to go to another facility recently, so we haven't been getting many CABGs or valves recently.

[lpnflorida]

My employer has my cell phone number, not my house number. That way I never feel locked into waiting by the phone. See if you can do the same,then keep a uniform in your trunk if you must when you are away from the house.

Times are tough in some areas of the country. Sadly if your hospital is experiencing low census most likely so are other entities in your area.

[nurseeB]

It is a bad time right now here in Pennsylvania. I was working agency per diem and couldn't get a shift for any of the hospitals I was oriented. The permanent nurses were getting cancelled also.

Where I used to work, they tried to cancel us in 4 hour increments. That means if you were scheduled for a 12 hour shift they would call you three times to tell you not to come in...or you were forced to come in for 4 hours. I have also seen this in a few other places. I would definitely start looking elsewhere for employment. If I'm not being paid, I shouldn't be tied to the hospital.