Vacation time question!

Strictly up to your management and HR, every employer policy is different

That is a lot of PTO- do you have that time accrued? If you have it, you're free to take it, but realize the senior people will get vacation time over your requests if you put in the same time- that's how it works where I work. The senior people put in their requests first and then down the line from there.

If this is your first job, I'm confused as to how you have so much PTO. I would be very careful in your first months not to ask for too much time off.

We have to pick our vacation time from May-Dec in Feb. You need to ask your manager how it works. Ours is all seniority based. And remember, with PTO it is usually all your sick, vacation and holiday time included in there, so if you use it all you won't have time for sick or holiday use. Could be a problem.

If this is your first job, I'm confused as to how you have so much PTO. I would be very careful in your first months not to ask for too much time off.

Well I will get my 1st PTO in the next pay period since I will be off orientation. We get 8.9 something hours per pay period so it ends up being around 29 days a year. PTO includes vacation & sick time but I never was a person to call out to begin with, and I rarely get so sick that I cant work. So if I use 6 PTO in my 2 wk vacation in August and then another 6 PTO in end of Sept or December thats only 12 PTO that I would have used for the year.

Another consideration you might have would be that even if you have never been so sick in the past that you had to call out from work, this is your first nursing job and it might be different. I see lots of people that never had to work night shift before finding out that they have a really hard time with the effect those weird hours have on their bodies and health. Also, if your unit has a call-off policy for low census you might find that most people use PTO to still get paid for shifts that they are called off from.

If you don't plan to keep a good stockpile of PTO for those times, you might find yourself having some problems.

Never bank on not needing sick hours. I fell during my first year of work, broke my ankle severely and was out of work for 6 months. I used all my PTO, went on long term disability and had to pay my insurance out of my savings for 3 months. So always keep a cushion!

My advice. Use your PTO. Live your life. You work to live, not the other way around.

I blow all my PTO every year.

For my hospital, it's first come, first served. You have 6 months in advance to request your time...and you can use your PTO as needed, there's no abusing the PTO system....I tend to work around my vacation days....so in November, I took my family to Disney for 10 days.....We are self schedule, so I scheduled myself to work 2 days before we left, took 1 PTO day that week, 1 PTO the next week, and when I came back, I worked 2 shifts in that second week...so I got a 10 day vacation, and only used 2 days of PTO.

Another consideration you might have would be that even if you have never been so sick in the past that you had to call out from work, this is your first nursing job and it might be different. I see lots of people that never had to work night shift before finding out that they have a really hard time with the effect those weird hours have on their bodies and health. Also, if your unit has a call-off policy for low census you might find that most people use PTO to still get paid for shifts that they are called off from.

If you don't plan to keep a good stockpile of PTO for those times, you might find yourself having some problems.

Also, some institutions have rules about how much PTO you need to leave in your bank for potential illness.