Re: Out Of Hours Nursing Cover - Advice needed

Aimee Barber — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:26:45 GMT

Hi,

Ive worked in 2 practices were we had OOH nursing cover, the first one was set up where the nurses shared the nights between themselves, with one nurse covering the weekend night (fri,sat,sun) that nurse had the mondy off. Otherwise everyone else was in the next day unless they really had been up all night. If quiet you could sleep in the flat on site.

The next practice had one nurse on for 7 nights and they had the days off. The worked from 7 till11pm and had to be awake for all this time. Then if nothing needed doing could go to sleep and get up to do checks, they would then need to be up and ready for handover at 8am. normally i was up from about 6am.

Ive also heard of practices where the nurse works for 7nights, is up the whole time doing odd jobs, the phones and inpatients then they get the following week off (essentially they work 2 weeks worthof hours in 1 week, so no extra pay).

Personally I like having 7 nights in a row with the days off, you get to bond with your patients and get used to the hours for 1 week. We had 12 nurses covering the nights (big practice) so you only do about 4 weeks in the year.

Hope that helps.

Re: Out Of Hours Nursing Cover - Advice needed

Tracy Windler RVN — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:24:22 GMT

Search for ooh cover in search facility. There have been a few threads on this topic.