I work in a department at a hospital called Sterile Processing. If you don’t know what that is, why clean and sterilize instruments that are used in surgical cases and provide doctors with anything they may need for a surgery. It’s the highest paying position our hospital offers that doesn’t require a college degree. Sometimes our work gets a little backed up, so our managers are able to call overtime so that we can catch up on work. However, the director of all surgical services at our hospital told us to stop calling so much overtime. From my understanding they want it to stop completely. They said that our department is fully staffed and doesn’t need to call it.
The reason they call overtime isn’t just because we are understaffed, although we often are, sometimes the workload is too much to handle. We average at about a hundred surgeries a day, typically more. The amount of instrumentation is too much for us to keep up with. Just today there were 337 trays containing at least 20 instruments each that needed to be sorted, inspected, and sterilized by the time we left. Even with us fully staffed we wouldn’t be able to get them all done.
Even ignoring the effectiveness of the decision, it screws me over personally because I work a lot of overtime trying to get ahead and buy a house. I just bought a new car as well, which I would like to be able to pay off early but without any OT that has thrown a huge wrench in my plans.
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I’m confused, what does PTO have to do woth thr OT ?
So I’m assuming the PTO in the title was incorrect.And you meant overtime as in OT.
But here’s the deal all you can do is listen to your bosses.If you don’t get the job done, you don’t get it done.Don’t do it half a**To where somebody gets sick or an infection.Do the job correctly but if you don’t get enough done they will start to understand that either have to hire more people or allow occasional overtime.
Your personal budget is irrelevant in the business decision.You should not be setting a budget based on overtime. And if you just bought a new car, then you’re gonna have to cut into your down payment budget.More I mean all of this is completely irrelevant.
I’m not really sure what you’re looking for here. They are not required to give you overtime.
I have to kind of wonder if you guys are milking the overtime system a little bit as well.
If the workload is too much for the people in the department then it is understaffed. More work means more hours, after a certain point that should mean more staff needed. If “fully staffed” still can’t keep up with the work then that means more people or more/better equipment is needed. Or someone needs to go through the workflow and better optimize the process.
If the workload is too much for the people in the department working at expected efficiency then it is understaffed. More work means more hours, after a certain point that should mean more staff needed. If “fully staffed” still can’t keep up with the work then that means more people or more/better equipment is needed. Or someone needs to go through the workflow and better optimize the process.