Scheduling

[traumajd]

HELP please! We are in the process of trying to come up with a schedule to cover a trauma service that also suits the needs of our PA practice. We want to do this before administration comes up with a schedule for us. Our main goals are to cover trauma floors in the morning (starting around 6am), evening coverage (until 11pm or midnight) and possibly ICU (7am until whenever). There are four PAs who can rotate through all areas. Administration wants to keep us to 40 hours per week, but we can do it with 80 hours every two weeks if that works better. We prefer longer stretches of days on, therefore longer stretches of days off. And, of course, no one wants to do too many weekends or evenings. Shift length doesn't matter much, as long as the time between 6am and 10 or 11 pm is covered. Pretend there is no call time involved. Now, here's the kicker...we haven't come up with anything that covers all of this. Admin is ok with a schedule that has gaps so that we can ask for more staff :wink:.

 

Any ideas, suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

John

[rcdavis]

First need to know:

 

- you are scheduling probably 18 hours/ day of trauma floor coverage (6a-Mn)

 

- AND you want to cover the ICU????

 

Truth is, the ICU coverage can be a full time job, and most likely has patients which are more "immediate" than the step down trauma floors ( excepting TICU/SICU). If you are going to assign a player to the ICU, had better realize that more than likely there will be a serious decrease in "man hours available" for trauma floor activity.. Which, during the day, are much busier than at night...

 

My experience , covering having covered both SICU,TICU and the cardiac surgery progressive step down floors, is that- depending on floor and ICU patient population- can be a tall order.

 

first decision you need to make is: do you want one or two providers covering / day ? Ie: do you want to do 18s or any combination of 18: 9+9, 12 +6, 10+8. Hours/ day.. My recommendation is no provider do more than 12/day.. More preferable 10s.

 

If you are going to go with 2 providers/day, then you need to look at the hours you are Sked to cover per week .. This would be 18 x 7--> 126 hours.. Which, even Steven, means that if you go on say, a 7 on 7 off schedule, each provider initially working 9 hours.. Each provider will work 63 hours every 2 weeks. With equal distribution of weekends.

 

Unfortunately, this means that there are not enough hours for full time equivalent.. Which means that, to bring up the hours worked to equal 80 hours/ week, you would need to work approx 2 9 hour days during your "off week" .. Which may be enough to have you cover the ICU as the "off call" PA.. but means that you will only have 5 days off out of 14... And, unless you want to do 9 in a row, means that those 5 days would be broken up.

 

Let me know if my assumptions are correct.. And what you mean by maximum time off, and what your institution requires you to work minimum to be counted as a full time equivalent .. And I'll see what I can come up with... Remember you have 126 hrs week on the floors, and that will leave no more ( or less) than 34 hours / week to devote to the ICU... Which has to start at 7a also...

 

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