SBPhilips

Our unit is currently deducting hours from a nurse's scheduled work week if they are on call on the coming Saturday (or even a week night) in anticipation of the fact that they might get called in, to reduce potential overtime in the unit. There are, of course, times when the nurse is not called in and then they have not been able to reach their hours for the week. Is anyone working on a unit where this is being done? Does anyone have any recommendations as to how they are managing or avoiding overtime situations?

We have a 14 bay recovery area, as well. We have a PACU 'log' that is kept on the computer as an excel spread sheet. Listed on there are the anticipated arrival time of a pt., name, surgeon, procedure, account number. We start our day with this. The charge nurse or unit secretary manages this as the day progresses. On there, we list which nurse gets which patient, into which bay, and what time the patient arrived. Once the patient arrives, we also list if they need a bed, or, if they've received an inpatient bed, which bed assignment it is. In addition, we have a white board with each nurses' name that gets checked when they are up next for a patient, in a rotation basis. We allow for variables for skipping a patient, such as a difficult patient, pediatric pt., etc. The log on the computer can be accessed by each nurse at their bay for a 'read only' purpose so they know what is going on. The charge or secretary knows who received which patient when, to help plan who gets the next patient. The computer spread sheet has really improved things for us compared to when we used to keep track of everything on many pieces of paper.