Shift Cancellations (Please HELP!!)

Nurses Career Support

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My workplace started cancelling nurses due to low census. The cancellations are based on seniority. Among other nurses, I've been at this facility the least amount of years. There has been numerous instances where I've been cancelled for the whole week, while other nurses have gotten their full three days. I am always the first to be cancelled, regardless of previous cancellation. Something about this does not seem okay. I have looked everywhere in the hospital policy about cancellation based on seniority and I cannot find it. I am a full time employee and I live in a right to work state. Please Help!

Yeah, I can see your point, but the flip side of that is if a newbie is always being called off first, they aren't likely to stay to become senior staff. They'll go somewhere else where the rotations are, well, rotated. If there's five nurses scheduled, and for a week or so they only need four, why should the newest to join just not work for that whole period of time? I would think that would be a serious impediment to retention.

True, but it's also an impediment to retention to do it the other way. When my coworkers who had been working steadily for a few years suddenly started getting canceled regularly because a bunch of new nurses were hired, some of them became disgruntled and started looking for new jobs. So the hospital lost some "established" (at that facility) nurses and gained some new nurses. Then some of the new nurses didn't work out and we became short staffed. It kind of makes me wonder what the point was.

I think it would be more fair to hire nurses per diem and offer them full time positions as they open up.

I love getting canceled, though. Feels like Christmas, to me.

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