no regular schedule

[GratefulHeart]

I'm about 5 months into my first nursing job on a monitored bed floor in an acute care hospital and am growing discouraged by the lack of quality of life and stress & strain on my family by not being able to plan anything with them. Though I'm thankful to be employed as a new grad with good pay & good benefits, I have no predictable schedule other than that I work 12-hr nights. Most of the time my schedule isn't released until less than 2 weeks before I am required to work. My manager is a pleasant person, but he has delegated work scheduling to one of the night nurses and doesn't like to confront people or get involved after he has delegated a task (by his own admission). The scheduling nurse is not receptive to my requests to be placed on one of the two night teams, so I can know more predictably when I will be working. Instead I am being used to fill in wherever needed, which means if someone on one team wants a night off, then I am switched to that night, back & forth. I am scheduled to work overtime without being asked, and my schedule is changed without anyone telling me. I literally have to check every time I go in to work to make sure that I haven't been "written in" to the book for the next night without any notice. When I have spoken to my manager about this, he says that it's hard to cover all of the scheduling needs and that "next month it will probably get better" because so-and-so will be back from being out sick/having surgery/on vacation/on family leave/etc (endless problem list & excuses - I don't see any end to this).

Does anyone else reading here have experience with this problem and/or can offer me some constructive suggestions?

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

While our situation is quite different, it's no less dissatisfying. Our collective agreement states that the schedule must be "out" 12 weeks in advance of the first day on it. With our there-is-no-self-in-self-scheduling we schedule in 18 week blocks and we've already completed the schedule up to the 4th of July. So in theory all shifts should be staffed to baseline and there should be a good balance. and in theory we should be able to plan our lives. But the reality is something different. We still have shifts that, when the day arrives, we have 10 scheduled and others where we have 22 scheduled when our baseline is 18. And because we're a critical care area and the needs are constantly shifting, the schedule can be changed right up until the last minute and you're expected to "just know"... or else continually check in the computer to see if there have been any changes. Oh and then there are the transcription errors... the committee makes changes after you've put in what you want to work and then negotiated where you could to fill in the gaps, the manager gives it all a cursory glance and sends it on to the staffing clerk who then puts it all into the computer. We have well over 100 nurses to be scheduled; 18 weeks of shifts for a full time person works out to 60... the number of entries is mind-boggling. So the staffing clerk makes mistakes and the nurse is supposed to catch them, even though the committee may have made several changes after it left the nurse's hands.

Our management makes a big deal out of the fact that we "self-schedule" in attracting new staff. When they do it for the first time and find out just what it really is, they feel betrayed. It's backfiring on them in a big way... these new people owe the unit nothing, they don't feel obligated to stay when they feel they've been lied to and who can blame them?

[solneeshka, BSN, RN]

Sigh. I don't see any easy fix for this problem.

Self-scheduling is an underestimated perk. The schedule book is laid out for staff to fill in their schedule with basic rules of required numbers of weekends and holidays. There must be a certain number of nurses for each shift, and it is left up to the nurses to have the schedule balanced.

We have self-scheduling and it's a joke with all of the requirements they include. By the time you add every 3rd weekend (which I know is light on weekends), 3 Mondays and 3 Fridays in a 6 week schedule, I still have no predictability to my schedule. Our self-scheduling is just a request and the charge nurse moves people around at will.

This has been one of the hardest things for me to adjust to as well. I got so tired of it I actually asked my manager if I could just work every weekend plus Monday so that I could just KNOW that my work schedule is Sa/Su/Mo and then I could schedule a life, maybe sign up for an exercise class or something *fun*! I work nights, and even for night-shifters, a "weekend" is Sa/Su night. So I was essentially volunteering to be a weekend-option person without the weekend-option pay (and I would be the normal 3 shifts a week instead of a weekend-option 2 shifts a week). She said no. She was too afraid that giving me any kind of special treatment would open up the floodgates to others asking for special treatment. I can understand that. But we are currently paying single and double bonuses to get enough people to work on weekends. No one wants to do it! Except me! And I will do it every weekend for NO bonus! And she said no.

Is it all of the air in people's heads that makes them float up to management or what?

[LovePurple]

welcome to nursing dear!

the thing that really sucks about this statement.. is that I don't feel anything should be like this!! A job wrecking havic on family time.. no thank you! My husband is my #1! I don't feel like I should have to put up with a job that leaves us with no time together, me cranky, and never sleeping at the same time. =( i would love to be a nurse, with have yet to find a happy situation that i can have a life outside of work... it sucks....

[GratefulHeart]

Ditto. It seems to be one of those well-kept secrets that isn't let out of the bag til after you're actually on the job.

True too that I feel very little loyalty to this employer for the lure of so much time off per year - but with almost NO opportunity to ever use it (that's the second half of the equation that they don't tell you during recruitment).

To the poster who spoke about lack of employee loyalty: The onus is on the employer to create a work environment that promotes a sense of loyalty. When managers & policies are in place which wreak havoc with employees' personal lives, the employer has got to expect that they're going to be continually losing their workforce to better opportunities when those present. [Just wait til the market turns...]

[MedSurgeMess]

the thing that really sucks about this statement.. is that I don't feel anything should be like this!! A job wrecking havic on family time.. no thank you! My husband is my #1! I don't feel like I should have to put up with a job that leaves us with no time together, me cranky, and never sleeping at the same time. =( i would love to be a nurse, with have yet to find a happy situation that i can have a life outside of work... it sucks....

I know it stinks, but unfortunately, almost all of us have had to take on the nights, weekends, and holidays and make sacrifices....and in this economy, just be thankful for the job. Hopefully things will change soon......

[MB37]

It's not that bad everywhere. We do modified self scheduling in my ICU. We're required to sign up for at least 3 weekend shifts q 4 wks (F/Sa/Su for night people), and can't request off more than two days in a row without putting in a formal vacation request. Otherwise, we fill in the schedule we want as well as the days that we want off, leaving the ones we care less about blank. We almost always get our requests off, and my schedule is usually close to what I ask for. Of course, we're a huge unit with over 100 nurses and have a large weekend option staff. The one issue is vacation requests - if you don't request 6 mo in advance, someone usually beats you to it. Also, our 4 week schedule doesn't always come out two weeks early like it's supposed to. It's not perfect, but I'm usually happy with it.

Example of my fill in for one week:

Su:R M: T: W:P Th:P F: P Sa:

Means I'm requesting to work night W/Th/F, and that I want Sunday night off. I might get this, or she might put me on TWTh if she needs to. They also try to avoid (but don't always succeed) putting people on every other night, unless that's what you ask for.

I don't mind how ours works, but I've always worked in 24h businesses that have to staff based on seasonal need.