Need help for a proposal please!!!! (Long)
 

Hi all. I've been delegated by my coworkers to make a short presentation/proposal to our new director to try and sell the idea of working "on-call" on the night-time weekends and I need help.

I work in a hospital, our office is called clinical support. We are responsible (mainly) for scheduling patient attendants to sit in the rooms of patients that are suicidal or confused (and hazards to their own safety). The schedules are actually made during day shift one day in advance, and the only time we on night shift have to call for coverage is if we admit a new patient or we have a PA call out sick. We also, after hours, make calls to agencies to request RN's/LPN's for units that are short. That's pretty much all to it. There are only 5 people that work in our office (1 person 7a-3p M-F, and then 2 rotate 7a-7p, and 2 of us rotate 7p-7a).

Of course, I work third shift and between myself and you guys...the whole office knows we on third shift don't do anything. I mean, I may take about 5 calls a night, unless we have an influx of suicidal admits (rare). I run reports ONE night a week, and generally, I may do about 30-45 minutes of work on a 12-hour shift. :o My partner and I want to propose the idea to her that we "take call" on weekends because it is so boring until it's almost unbearable here on the weekends. Honestly, our jobs could be eliminated (not that I want that), but hospital administration wants to have someone available from our office 24 hours.

Our idea is to have a pager number that is left with the nursing administrator and on our voicemail that we would carry and call back from. We would receive the schedule (via email) from the off-going day shift person and do report over the phone once we get the schedule. We have a list of our agencies, so we could call them if necessary.

My dilemma is how to propose this to her without sounding like we are total slackers (which honestly we are...but it's not our fault they don't give us any work). I mean, our office knows we don't do anything, but the director is fairly new (we don't have a manager), and I don't think she understands the extent of how useless it is to have us here at night (let alone weekend nights). How would you address this?

Thanks in advance for any answers I get! :D

I just want to see if I am following you correctly.

You are on the night shift , you don't do much, especiially on the weekends. So you effectively want weekends off by creating an on-call status where they can page you if there is a change in schedule or an influx of patients, and you can then call people from home to make arrangements for coverage or whatever?

Sounds ok . .. except . . . how are the going to compensate you? Are you hourly or salary? IT sounds like they are paying x-amount of hours of payroll that they really don't have to . . . which is ok, but if they are going to agree to your proposal won't they just eliminate your job?

I mean they aren't going to pay you to be at home. They could just expand the responsibilities of a salaried administrator to cover weekend calls.

Anyways, apologies in advance if I am misreading your situation.


Note: An aphorism: Never make it perfectly clear to the people that pay you that you are superflous.

Thanks for responding James...nope, you are understanding correctly. Actually, they WON'T eliminate my job because hospital admin wants us to be available 24 hours. At one point, I was the only night shift employee and I worked M-Thur, but they actually hired someone else so that we could be here all the time, hence the rotating weekends.

I guess that IS my question, is it possible to make this proposal without appearing completely useless?

BTW...we are hourly employees. As for the pay, the way that the agencies do it, there is a set hourly pay that you get when you are on call, and there is an extra differential if for some reason you have to come into the office.