POC Department hours
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Good morning! I work in a 6 hospital system with a centrally located POC department and was wondering how similar POC programs schedule their hours? We have 1 FT-80hr, 1 FT-60hr and 1 PT-48hr POCC and myself-(Supervisor FT) so it can be challenging at times!
Thanks in advance!
Jessica Lang
POC Supervisor
St. ELizabeth Healthcare, KY
Thanks in advance!
Jessica Lang
POC Supervisor
St. ELizabeth Healthcare, KY
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Do any of the staff take call for off hours or weekends? Maybe all of you could share call for off hours, weekends and holidays.
I work for a single hospital but 22 physician office practices. 1 -72hr. POCC that's me.
In the hospital if there is an issue off hours or weekends I get calls at home. I will come in if an unplanned downtime occurs. The main lab in the hospital covers all POCT if a test system becomes unavailable, it's the backup.
The Chemistry Supervisor/Lab Manager cover for me when I'm on vacation, my days off etc.
Larger groups that I have contact with share call.
Good Luck
I'm putting in a plug to list all testing sites regardless of clinical significance to the organization.
Maybe rank based on 'past need aka how much hand holding required to get them to the compliance finish line (or starting gate!). Include all sites you potentially have to cover for broken meters, new QC lot#s acceptable ranges, etc. Include waived testing (only) sites. Also consider the remote sites that maybe you handle with phone calls but it's still 'time' to factor in. Don't just focus on the critical care areas, which I've heard is a common way of 'dividing staff time' then something comes up in a clinic and no one has time to visit.
Group the areas separately which are 24/7, 12/7 so forth. That may help determine scheduling on your end. Our 'ambulatory' Urgent Care areas are 12/7 which includes 'after hours' and weekends and holidays. Incident Command flipped our Urgent Cares into 9 months of COVID19 patient assessment and swabbing centers. Unexpectedly additional POCT was requested because we were flooded with patients 'coming in for swabbing' who were very sick patients avoiding the ED or with chronic conditions. Demands for POCT past the initial flu and strep testing came in because a few of the Urgent Cares are not physically close to our clinical labs.
There is lab staff at each facility assigned in overseeing POC. The main campus has myself, two full time (80) and just picked up another person at 1/2 time (40). Hours are M-F, 7am to 3:30, 3:00pm to 11:30pm and M-W, 9 to 4:30. This covers both day an night nursing shifts. We are now starting to send staff from the main campus to the other facilities to perform the Cal/Ver, Correlations and Instrument to Instrument studies to better support them. It is stressed that hours may vary from time to time, especially when visiting other facilities.
We currently are using:
Other things that help:
Having a system wide POC Correction form built into the system intranet which allows staff on the floors to be able to submit corrections as needed.
Staff on the floors are instructed to ensure they have enough supplies to last 3-4 days (over the weekend).
Night and weekend Supervisors in the Core Lab are aware of POC instrumentation, howver this is very rarely needed as the floors have multiple meters and can normally wait until POC is on campus to address any issues.
We have a FT POCC (80 hours/pay)- that's me.
We also have a PT POCC, 32 hrs/pay, shared with the lab as a 48 hr/pay bench tech to make a FT position. Hours are M-F, 7:30-4, no weekends or holidays. We alter our hours to accommodate special situations.
Lab staff is educated to assist in after-hours POC issues, with instructions to call me if
they cannot solve an issue. I take a laptop home on the weekends in order to access RALS from home if need be. I am only called on rare occasions. The PT POCC and the Chemistry section supervisor cover for me on days off.