Weekend option-is it going away and never coming back?

forgop · Oct 9, 2013

In my market, many hospitals have stopped back filling weekend option positions or eliminated them altogether as was the case with me a couple of weeks ago. We work 24 hours every weekend and given the benefits of a F/T employee are now being cut back to regular part-time status. The political climate is to strip out and devalue health care in such a way in the name of "affordability" that the financial reward doesn't come close to wait we have to deal with on a daily basis.

I'm still new (BSN grad May 2012) and have worked weekend option for my first real job since then. I work with a great group of RN's and of all the night shift RN's in the ER, they are by far more experienced than the night shift during the week. Even as a new grad, my base cut in pay is expected to be $15-16k LESS next year, let alone those who make far more than me in their base pay. Personally, I picked up a lot of extra hours and OT this year that I'm now only expecting to make 40% of what I will make this year because other weekend option nurses will be picking up shifts they normally wouldn't work to help make up for the difference in pay.

As a result, I've started applying for other F/T positions and there is still a hospital in my market advertising for weekend option and regular F/T nights. It's quite surprising given this hospital receives much higher percentages of uninsured/medicaid than all the others. They've called to set up and interview, but I can't help but be gun shy to take an offer for a weekend option position knowing how many others have done it. Part of me likes working fewer hours at a higher rate of pay, but then I'm also burnt out already for missing out on Sunday mornings at church with my family. Seems if I took regular F/T, I'd likely have some sort of weekend rotation anyway and if I wanted to pick up extra hours, they'd likely be available.

Would you take the risk of a weekend option offer today? Either way, I know that going forward in my current gig is nothing more than 0.6FTE in my current role and being offered a 0.6 WEO gig would still be better than what I have going forward, but just how long would it last is what I want to know.