What does being "on - call" mean?

Idaho_nurse · Aug 25, 2015

It depends upon the agency. For example: We get a standard fee of $50 for weekend call per day, and $25 for weekday call per day. Then we get our base pay for any time spent out in the field. That is a long call time, and could be a blessing or a disaster.. for example, if you are called out alot, you would never get any rest. Our weekends start at 5pm friday to 8am saturday. then 8am saturday to 8am sunday, then 8am sunday to 8am monday. weekdays always start at 5pm and end the next morning at 8am. Our agency office is very rural, and I personally live an average of an hour or so from any of my patients. yes, I get paid my mileage and time on the road but by the time you get the call, assess the situation, get out there, finish, and get home.. I could easily be gone over 3 hours. if you get called out multiple times per night, it can really be trying and busy.

elkpark · Aug 25, 2015

I would guess that it probably does involve getting extra pain, haha.

Mom2boysRN · Aug 25, 2015

For the agencies I've worked for you are on call for a week from Friday at close to the following Friday at open. You get $250 for the week. You also get paid for any visits, socs, etc also. You have to do after hours socs on the week days and may have to do some on the weekend too. If there are visits ordered for the weekend those are yours also, plus if anyone calls for help you triage and go out if needed. It sucks. Basically all you do for a week is work.

KelRN215, BSN, RN · Aug 27, 2015

On-call was one of the reasons I left my home health job. The agency was primarily private duty though my job had nothing to do with those patients. I was just so all set with working for somewhere that would hire anyone with a pulse and a nursing license where there were no consequences to calling out for your midnight shift on Saturday 15 minutes in advance. Very happy to be working in an environment where I don't get woken up in the middle of the night with nurses calling for stupid reasons. I seriously once had a nurse call me at 4am to say that she felt that the patient's mother wasn't letting her do enough for the patient/wanted to do too much herself and that the patient's father was attracted to her. Seriously, it's 4am, leave.me.alone.

gibsongirl · Aug 27, 2015

$3/HR unless you are scheduled to work - then $0. Ex. We work 8-5 Saturday, Sunday.

If you are also on call, you get no compensation in pay. You do get a point credit. Regular staff gets time and a half, plus mileage from leaving to returning home if called out. PER diem staff gets paid per visit. There is absolutely no compensation.

Med.ICU.DIAL.HH · Sep 2, 2015

I work every weekend (Friday 5pm-Monday 8am), which is 60+ hours of work. I get a salary, plus mileage. The salary is just shy of $550.00 (gross) per weekend. I find this setup to be a double edged sword. Some weekends are slow (rare) and I don't have any SOCs and no prn visits or calls, and other weekends I am bombarded with calls and visits.

Yes, I am guaranteed a set amount of money, but some weekends are so hellish, it is just not worth it. I can handle about 4 SOCs over the weekend easily, 5-6 SOCs is pushing it. Once when they tried to give me 7 SOCs I almost blew a gasket!!

You are supposed to have all of the charting done by Monday morning, plus you have to spend a couple extra hours writing up report sheets for the nurses you are handing the patients off to. There is additional paperwork you have to prepare for the office manager. My boss is good in that he cuts me slack if I cannot get the "paperwork" done one time.

I would say each SOC, including visit time, takes 4-6 hours to complete. So if you have 6 SOCs that is minimum 24 hours of work. So you can see, I often get more work than is humanly possible to complete. If I compared all of the hours to my previous $40.00/hour ICU job ($960 gross for 24 hours/compared to $550.00 for 60 hours) you can see the pay doesn't cut it at all! I often need to work on Monday and Tuesday to finish up all of the computer charting.

When you have 6 scheduled SOCs you can easily get multiple prn visits, or your SOCs may also need an additional visit the next day. You are also fielding ALL of the phone calls, including calls in the middle of the night.

Being on call can be tough. People call with all sorts of strange things and you have to think on your feet and draw from the well of all of your past nursing experiences.

Being on call can wear you down: mentally, emotionally and physically.

My boss thinks that the $1,100 per pay period "is more than fair" because he thinks it all balances it out. I am not sure it does balance out, because it seems like he feels free to make up for my slow weekends with an impossible load on the next weekend. I would say it is fair that my worst home health day has outweighed my worst day at the hospital. At least at the hospital you are off duty when you go home!