24 hr shifts

[NorthCoastChick]

My companies (I work for 2, part time for one, full time for the other) are both 24 hour based. We get paid for the full 24 for the pt company, 16 hours for the full time company unless we get called between 2-4am. It ends up working out pretty well for sleeping and running calls. Full time is 72 hours a week, not necessarily consecutive hours... but having 4 days off a week from my full time job is pretty amazing. Don't know how those in my company with families do it, but I enjoy working three days and then having four days off to spend as a normal human being.

 

[DrParasite]

24 hour shifts are great if you are slow...... not so if you are busy

take my current employer. we only work 12s. the reason being so far this shift, 1 of the 5 BLS trucks has already done 10 jobs, and we still have another hour or so to go in the night. day shift averages about 12 shifts as well.

day shift for one of the ALS trucks did 10 jobs.

and these are low numbers, during the summer time I have heard we can do close to 20 jobs in a 12 hour shift.

if you only get 3 calls a day, and can sleep through most of the night, then 24s are the way to go. best shift I have seen is FD based, 24 hour, 72 off, with 4 rotating tours.

but for busier places (like most urban EMS systems and even suburban systems that I am familiar with) 12 hours are the norm. some even max you out at 18 hours, and then you need 6 off to sleep before you can come back for more.