pulling Call

[Chuckie]

I'm a hospital endoscopy nurse and pull from 15 to 20 days of call at a time. We have 2RNs only and need to cover all the weekends and every night and evening call through the week. Does anyone else have to pull this much call? I feel the hospital is taking advantage of us and we have no way around it. The contract doesn't mention much about call and the job requirements just says call is required. I feel I pull an illegal amount of call. I work 7-3 monday through friday and get called in maybe 2-3 times during the week on the weekends we can be in the hospital from 4-10 hours a day. We have no one to relieve us for breaks no recovery for patients either. A lot of the Evening call is over the 8 hour shifts. I have pulled in 35 hours a week in overtime pay this is routine.

We have 2RN's and 2 Techs only for all the call we are required to have 1 RN and 1 Tech on at all times which means you are on call half the time. I was wondering how legal this is to work Monday through Friday then pull call half the nights and everyother weekend.

[Crouton]

Wow, you sure have to take alot of call. At the endoscopy lab that I work at we take call one night a week(the same night every week) and once every fourth weekend. I guess I should appreciate this. Some weekends we can be there 4-5 hours total or 20 hours total. We always have 2 staff on call at a time and it is 7 RN's and 1 surgical tech that take call. Is it just the 2 of you that work in your endoscopy lab?