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Re: 10 hour vs. 12 hour shifts


Posted by Another voice on February 12, 2002 at 12:48:24:

In Reply to: 10 hour vs. 12 hour shifts posted by RPSGT on February 11, 2002 at 13:37:14:

I've worked both and had to deal with both from the management side as well. The problem with the 10 hours, there was no give or grace if you had problems (patient late, equipment, etc). You would end up having to stay over, creating OT, to get your 6 hour min. study time. You were also rushing rushing to get the patient hooked up and to bed. You never had time to spend with the patient. 3-13 hours has worked better for the patient to not be so rushed, tech gets their 40 hours, there is some give if there's some kind of problem (patient or equipment). We even have enough time that if a patient no-shows we can usually call someone in early that's an in town/local patient and get them done. We spend a lot of our extra time on patient education and such now.

Though the techs are a bit more tired from working 13 hours they like it better. They have the extra day off, and are not as stressed as when they were working 10 hours. We have a whole lot less OT and I've noticed a lot less sick days too. Any tech that wants to is welcome to take a nap before heading home in the morning if they need. I have one tech that lives 45 min away and does a 30-45 min nap routinely after she finishes her third day.

We did try having someone come in and do the overlaping shift thing but it didn't work for us. We had two major problems. It didn't matter which tech set the patient up, the patient would not care for the 'strange nurse' they woke up to. They built a bound with the tech that hooked them up and simply didn't feel comfortable with the stranger in the morning. The other problem was that the tech who did the hook up resented doing 'all the work' while the other tech came in and just monitored them 'getting the easy part'. That complaint happened even with the techs switching back and forth monthly. To say that deptment harmony went down is an understatement.

Anyway, we do the 3-13 hour thing and it's worked out great for us. All my techs like it best. Our patients come in at 6:30 and 8:00 and are in bed by 10:00-10:30. We make special arrangements if they need to come in later or earlier for some reason.

Hope that helps.

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