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Weekend staffing in hospital setting

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Category: Specialty Forum for PTs/Healthcare Professionals
Forum Name: Acute Care/Inpatient Rehab
Forum Description: Discussion on Acute Care/Inpatient Rehab
URL: http://www.cyberpt.com/ptforum/forum_posts.asp?TID=576
Printed Date: Nov 05 2024 at 3:40am
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Topic: Weekend staffing in hospital setting
Posted By: jenelpt
Subject: Weekend staffing in hospital setting
Date Posted: Feb 05 2010 at 3:36pm

Hi all,

Just trying to figure out how other hospitals staff thier dept on the weekends.

I currently work in a 565 bed hospital, we have 9 full time PTs, 2 part time PTs and 3 PTAs.  We worrk on all units in the hospital and rotaoe floors every 3 months.  Right now we work M-F and rotate through the weekends, getting a day off during the week.  We staff 3 therapists on Sat. and Sun. and see only priority pts (ortho,  Stroke, home plan and any new evals that come up if there is time).

Our physicians recently told our manager that PT needs to be more visible, and in response our manager is now asking us to work more weekends, giving us 5 therapists on Sat and Sun.  Needless to say i am not happy about this as I alrady work every other weekend and will now have to work more.

Just wondering how other hospital staff on the weekends, and what kind of patients are seen.  Any information would be helpful!  Thanks!

Jenel Gammiero, PT




Replies:
Posted By: apt
Date Posted: Feb 07 2010 at 8:15am
Hi Jenel,
I am not a big fan of working weekends at well. I work for a hospital system that has two hospitals on opposite sides of town. Therefore, on weekends we are responsible for PT services for both of them. Total beds is probably a little more than half the size of your hospital between our two hospitals. What we have done is hire per diem PT's that are interested in working weekends. We have two of them which greatly reduces the amount of weekends we work. We also employ 11 PT's (combo of inpatient & oupatient who are in the inpatient pool for weekends), 7 PTA's and a pool of aides (mostly college stuidents). With all this staff, I generally have to work one weekend every 4-5 wks. We staff our weekends by staffing 1 PT , 2 PTA's, 1 aide and 1 oncall PT on Sat. On Sun we staff 1 PT, 1 PTA and have 1 PT or PTA on call. The oncall person only comes in if there is a high case load.  We only see BID paitents once on Sat an Sun and don't see QD patients on Sun unless they are considered high priority. This system has worked pretty well for us as we are usually done around 1 or 2 pm. As the case load grows we probably will have to add anothe stff member for the w/e. I guess having a large group of PTA's and the per diem PT's have helped with minimizing w/e. As far as being more visible, I don't think it has to mean having more staff visible. You can promote your department via inservices and presentations to hospital staff, community programs, etc. We also perform screenings on new admits which are recommended by nursing so this helps increase PT visibility as well. I hope this helps.



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