Rant About On Call

[Sue Damonas]

We do 16 hour on calls on Saturday and Sunday nights and some weekdays. We recently started to take turns doing 24 hour calls on Saturdays and it has been a disaster for everyone so far. I did mine yesterday and had a lot of phone calls during the day but was then pretty much out on visits from 6pm and got home at 3am. I was so tired I almost drove off the road coming home. Maybe I'm just a big weenie but we've all put our 40 plus all lot of overtime hours in during the week and I think this is dangerous. Enough ranting, I'm going back to bed.

[shrinky]

I recall those days and am glad I very rarely take call. The one that killed me was a week-end call I did, 40 hours during the week and had call from 5p Fri til Mon at 8:30 am the back to work Mon at 8:30 am. I was out 40 hours that week-end for a total of 120 hours before a day off. I had to call my PCC out that wek-end to help and she worked 16 hours and another nurse worked 6 hours. We now have on call nurses or I would have to leave and retire early, it is nuts to work like that. I have also had nights when I almost fell asleep driving home-scary. When they tried to take our call nurses away because they are considered non-productive, we all turned in our resignations. Guess what? We have our call nurses and they are salaried. Sometimes we have to make a bold statement to make administration realize how unsafe some situations are. As long as we continue to do, they will continue to allow us to do as I have learned in my 42 years as a nurse. Anyway, find someone in authority to listen and get together with your peers and meet with them together to get them to understand the safety issues. Risk management may need to be involved since it is a safety issue for the organization. Good luck and keep us posted.:redpinkhe

[dosamigos76, RN]

Our census is hovering at 80 and we have an every other weekend RN and our casemanagers do back up call. We are almost fully staffed so that the CM will only have to rotate back up call every 7th weekend and one night every two weeks. However when the CM works the weekend, they take one day off the week before and one after the call. If they are out a lot at night, we adjust the schedule.

Been there, done that with working 12 days straight and being too tired. Don't want it for our agency. Our nurses are too important. We want our nurses to balance work and a personal life, but they can't do that if they're too tired and always feel like they're working.