OOH on call duty hours

Re: OOH on call duty hours

Vicki McDill — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 09:35:28 GMT

Heya for our OOH we do seven nights in a row and then get the following week off. The shifts are 18:00-08:30. An ACA does 23:45-08:30. This means that if its quiet then we can go to bed at 12 - but this rarely happens. The night nurses also receive commission. I personally struggle with doing 7 nights in a row but then you get a whole week off which is amazing. We have 4 nurses who do nights and they're on a rolling 5 week rota - so every fifth week is nights (one nurse loves nights so she does a week of night, week off, week of nights, week off, followed by a week of days).

Vicki x

Re: OOH on call duty hours

flubberlump — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 12:12:07 GMT

I work in a 10 vet hospital and we provide 24 hour cover. We have 2 nurses on call at a time. One nurse will be 1st on call, meaning that she must sleep at the hospital, and the 2nd on call can go home on standby. Depending on holidays etc we often work a 1st and a 2nd each, each week. Both nurses start at 9am, the 2nd will go home once everything is finished for the day depending on inpatients, admittance and calls. This will be 8pm at the earliest but I have often worked until 11pm on a 2nd. As I said the 1st sleeps at the hospital and there is a good chance if we are short of staff that she will work the following day until 6pm, having started at 9am the previous day. We are usually made to take back any extra hours in lieu, and receive no extra pay, increased hourly rate or bonus for working on call. We work weekends on a 1 in 5 rota, again with 2 nurses on call. One nurse will work 1st on call on Friday and Saturday, and 2nd on call on Sunday, and the other nurse will work the opposite. This means that one nurse starts work on Friday at 9am and won't leave until everything quietened down on Sunday, anytime between lunchtime and evening depending on number of calls. She is required to check patients throughout the night and attend any on site or offsite calls, so the amount of sleep she gets can be very little over the whole weekend. The other nurse will work from 9am on Friday, go home on Friday night when things are finished which is any time after 7pm but usually later. She will start again at 7am on Saturday and work through until things are done again, usually late evening. Then she will start again at 8am on Sunday and stay overnight, leaving on Monday. When she is at home overnight during the weekend she is still on call should the other nurse need her. After a weekend we take one day off in lieu using time accrued over the weekend, and we usually both leave early on Monday - not always though depending of staffing levels. We don't receive any bonus or on call fee for working weekends, we get a small increase in hourly rate for weekends and bank holidays. Sorry it's long winded, it's quite complicated!

Re: OOH on call duty hours

Rachel Woodcock — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 11:01:02 GMT

I now work nights but at my previous job I did on call one night a week and 1 in 3 fri,sat sun. So during the week id do a late shift and then be on call until 8am the next day. The weekends were the worst as I'd be on call from 7.30pm fri until 8am mon but I did receive a hefty bonus added to my salary for being on call

Re: OOH on call duty hours

Kate Dutton — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:57:13 GMT

At our practice currently we work the late shift 12-8pm and then will be on-call till 8am the next morning. The next day will be an 8am start though usually till 4.30pm - so a long day if you get a couple of call-outs. During this time you can either stay at the practice or go home, it's up to the nurse and where they live as to the decision. You get a £10 stand-by fee for being on-call during the week and £25 for each actual call-out - where you're expected to be there for at least 2 hours.