babysrhs

Hi, I work at a small commmunity hospital that does about 650-700 births a year. We have approx. 20 RN's on our dept with about half of those RN's being full time. We are all crossed trained to do LR/DR, Nursery, Level II Nursery and PP. We closed our unit about 8 years ago and it works great. In becoming a closed unit we agreed to cover the dept for all staffing needs (vacations, calloffs, hi pt census). We take approximately 25-30 hrs on call every 2 weeks without pay, and if we get called in we get time and a half. Usually people sign up before there shift or after for their call hrs. We usually sign up for 4 hr slot minimum, but you can take as much time as you want. In return we also have to size down if our census is low. It is usually not a problem because several staff members don't mind taking on call if the census is low and we also take turns being on call if nobody really to be called off. It has worked pretty well. Of course, there are always a few staff members who don't sign up for enough call and they get reminded if they are not doing their share. It works well, because you know you have backup if you get busy. We just look at our on call calander and call in our contigency staffing. The contignecy staff person has to be on the dept 40 min after getting called in. Before we had our closed unit, we'd rely on the supervisor to call extra staff. The Hospital supervisor was always too busy and made little attempt to get extra staff to assist you. You really come to appreciate your co-workers and depend on them to make the unit run smoothly. Our department is very fortunate to have a great patient care manager. She is always willing to help out when we get busy and will work extra to meet the needs of our department. I really hope you get your closed unit, It's better for your patients and it's better for staff moral. I

I work at a small hospital that does approx. 600 births per yr. We are training our staff (cross trained in lr/dr/nursery/pp) to circulate for Cesarean sections. Would you please give me some input on what your units pay for compensation to be on call for C-sections and approx. how many hrs a week do you take call? Do your part timers take equal amounts of call as your full time employees? Our nursing staff consisits of approx. 11 full time employees and 9 part time employees. Several years ago we implimented a closed unit in that we didn't get pulled to the other depts if our census was low but in return we agreed to do contigency staffing and flex down our hours if needed. We each agreed to take on call hours (without pay)approx 20-24 hrs per 2 week period in addition to our scheduled hrs. If we did get called in we would get time and half for the extra hours we worked. Several members of our staff would like this changed and I would appreciate any input from other hospitals, thanks for your time.