working the holidays

[WilcoWorld]

It's not great to miss out on holiday festivities, but man I love the actual shifts on a holiday.

Worked today and it was entirely real emergencies. Femur fracture, concerning chest pain, miscarriage, peritonsillar abscess, a patient with a stroke (likely possibly from their active covid).

This is what EM is supposed to be!

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[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

It's not great to miss out on holiday festivities, but man I love the actual shifts on a holiday.

Worked today and it was entirely real emergencies. Femur fracture, concerning chest pain, miscarriage, peritonsillar abscess, a patient with a stroke (likely possibly from their active covid).

This is what EM is supposed to be!

I always seem to get the Lonely Hearts Club. Ah well, glad you had a fun shift.

 

[emergentmd]

It's not great to miss out on holiday festivities, but man I love the actual shifts on a holiday.

Worked today and it was entirely real emergencies. Femur fracture, concerning chest pain, miscarriage, peritonsillar abscess, a patient with a stroke (likely possibly from their active covid).

This is what EM is supposed to be!

Its great b/c volume prob low. But imagine if you had a shift with all emergencies, talk about a fast burnout.

 

[WilcoWorld]

Its great b/c volume prob low. But imagine if you had a shift with all emergencies, talk about a fast burnout.

Of course I could't handle 2.5 pph of critically ill patients. But if all my patients get coded as 99285 charts then it's no problem to earn my keep at 1pph.

 

[bravotwozero]

Three years ago on thanksgiving day I had a patient with the most horrible aortic dissection I had ever seen arrest and bleed to death in front of his family as I was about to fly him out. Every thanksgiving I think about that.

 

[WilcoWorld]

Three years ago on thanksgiving day I had a patient with the most horrible aortic dissection I had ever seen arrest and bleed to death in front of his family as I was about to fly him out. Every thanksgiving I think about that.

Ouch.

Yeah, those "real" emergencies aren't as fun to take care of when the outcome isn't good.

 

[CliveStaples]

How does everybody handle getting paid for holidays? At my job, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Years Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day are "time and a half" holidays. Notably, the Eves of some of these days are not considered holidays. Do people work in groups that don't pay holidays any more and just try to split them up evenly? Negotiate pay on an ad hoc basis?

 

[BoardingDoc]

How does everybody handle getting paid for holidays? At my job, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Years Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day are "time and a half" holidays. Notably, the Eves of some of these days are not considered holidays. Do people work in groups that don't pay holidays any more and just try to split them up evenly? Negotiate pay on an ad hoc basis?

Our group splits holidays. Lottery system based on preference. No one gets special priority/seniority. No extra pay.

 

[p1acebo]

Our group splits holidays. Lottery system based on preference. No one gets special priority/seniority. No extra pay.

Same, at my current job and previous. I mean if you are already splitting holidays evenly what is the point of getting extra pay? That would only make a difference is some people wanted to work extra holidays, which certainly could be the case depending on the group.

 

[bravotwozero]

We have to work two out of 3 holidays for each season.

 

[GeneralVeers]

We alternate years which ones we have to work. I usually get NYE off in exchange for X-mas and Tgiving.

 

[bravotwozero]

We alternate years which ones we have to work. I usually get NYE off in exchange for X-mas and Tgiving.

Hah, that's exactly what I end up doing. Travel is a lot cheaper on or after New Year's I've found.

 

[alpinism]

I've never worked at a shop that paid more for the holidays unless its emergency last minute coverage.

 

[Hercules]

When I first started we paid a holiday bonus because we had 2 or 3 docs that were willing to work Christmas for incentive pay. Over the years it got to the point where regardless of incentive pay, no one wanted to work them so we just went to dividing it up. We split it up evenly and put together a template that each doc rotates through where Doc A becomes Doc B the following year, etc. It’s a pretty nice template that gets each doc at least 7 days off around the holidays. We also template for Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras—I know not a holiday for anywhere but New Orleans and MS and AL Gulf Coast. Here though our schools let out for either the week or half of the week surrounding Fat Tuesday.

 

[emergentmd]

I have never worked at a shop that did not pay a 1-2K bonus for holidays in 20+ years. Bottom line is it doesn't really matter b/c the $$$ pot is the same. Whoever doesn't work holidays just takes a haircut on pay/distribution but I am happy to take whatever haircut is needed to not do holidays/nights.