OOH cover

Re: OOH cover

Kim Buckley — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:00:37 GMT

In my old practice the nurse was on site all night and could call the vet in if needed. We got paid £25 a night!! That eventually changed to £75 a night. We did last checks at 10 and could then go to bed but would get up and check on patients if needed. The problem I had is we had to work full days either side which if you had a busy night with lots of inpatients (which was fairly common) it was very tiring. For weekends we got £75 per night and 2 days off in lieu. We were on call and on site for 48 hours :(

Re: OOH cover

rebeccawright — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:29:59 GMT

Thank you for you comment, it seems a lot of practice have their vets on call and nurses as back up. we will be looking at having a nurse on site 24 hrs and taking the phones,. The vet will only come back if needed to see the animals. I think that means we should get paid more than £20-£25 retainer that a couple of you have mentioned. Is this unreasonable? We will be onsite all night answering phones, dealing with the inpatients and assisting vets when they come in to se emergancies.

All of your comments are appreciated and really giving us an insight into other vets OOH procedures.

Bex

Re: OOH cover

shelly jefferies — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:06:58 GMT

I am in an independant mixed animal practice, we still do our own OOH cover. The nurses get paid a retainer of £20.00 per night they are on call, we only have to go in if vet needs assistance, the vets have the phones and do late inpatient checks. If we have something major in then the nurse may go in once or twice during the night to chk on patient to give the vet a break from every 1-2hrs. if we are on standby for a sunday we recieve £50 retainer for the day. Any time we get called in we get paid 1 + 1/2 times normal pay. If a nurse is needed then the client is automatically charged £45.00 nurse fee.

Works well here, we share the nights between 4 of us some doing more than others but dependant on who wants to do what and who needs most money at that time!!

Re: OOH cover

Sal the 1st — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:56:36 GMT

Its interesting hearing how many practices are taking back their own on call instead of using an ooh provider. There seems to be quite a few among the nurses I am in contact with

Re: OOH cover

Steph Worsley — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:36:47 GMT

at the last 2 practices where we did our own OOH nurses were paid a retainer for every niight they were on call (can't remember the first practice but 2nd was £25/night)

the first practice we had to do checks about 10 or 11pm unless the vet was called out, we also took the phones and triaged the calls prior to speaking to the vet, we also did the oncall for another smaller local practice. if we had to go in we used to get time and a half during the week till midnight then double after midnight, same on a sat and double all day sun.

the second one, we didn't do checks on inpatients the vet on call did them (unless we were called in then we helped out) and the vets took the phones, we were only called in if surgery was highly likely or something needed ivft and the vet couldn't drip on their own, in these cases we got £25/hr which was charged direct to the client

Re: OOH cover

jane Lewis — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:15:32 GMT

hi,

I work for an independant sa practice that still prides itself in doing its own on call and we find it generally works well. we looked into vets now but the boss prefers the personal service we can provide. Rather than have to be on call every night the practice set up a partnership with another local practice and we share on call duties. Therefore our practice is on call on a monday and wednesday night (dealing with calls from both practices clients) and the other practice do tuesdays and thursdays (on nights where we are not on call - no phone duties- we just have to deal with any inpatients at our own surgery). Weekend duties are then alternated throughout the year between the practices as are bank holidays. Dont know if you have any practices near you that might consider this kind of set up? or if it would work for you guys but its worth considering. We dont have a nurse on site overnight unless an animal is in a critical condition, we just have to go back and do checks as required.

Our OOH is paid at 1.5 x our hourly rate.

Hope this helps