EMS Multitasking (Multiple jobs during downtime)

MMiz

MMiz

I put the M in EMTLife
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I'm always shocked at how many jobs allow or tolerate sleeping on the job. For many of us EMS is a given, but professional pilots will often sleep on the flight deck, as do many other careers.

What would your reaction be if your employer required you to do another task instead of having down time? Would we see a dramatic decrease in overtime?

Working for a small private ambulance service, I can think of a million other things I'd have the 20 medics do besides sleep... but that's probably why I'm just an EMT and not the boss :)
 
Bring on the safety nap. On a 24 hour shift you can not expect staff to function effectively or safely if they have other tasks. Where I work each truck has an assigned task to complete each day. It is always something simple and takes less then 15 minutes to complete. Mostly chores like checking drug boxes on back line trucks, restocking, cleaning, etc.
 
while i fully understand employers wanting to maximize the efficiency of their payroll, there has to be a limit. this job requires time for decompression, especially on the long shifts.

to answer your question, if my employer required me to always be involved in something, i wouldnt take near as much ot.

i had one job where, on my sunday 24, i had a list of station duties. aside from running calls and all the ancillary that come with that(paperwork, restocking etc) i had a few easy chores. take out the trash, get the soiled linen ready to be disposed of, sweep the bay and record the odometer readings from all vehicles in the fleet. that was it. now, early in my tenure with the company, i would come into work and, after checking my rig, usually head right for a mid morning mar in the crew room. a few times, the boss would show up on sunday and call me out for napping with chores waiting for me(regardless of the 20hrs left in my shift. so i took to doing them right when i walked in. got my truck ready and spent 45min doing my half of the chores. done with everything by 8 or 830 and i was free and clear to nap the day away and nobody could say anything to me. i wouldnt have stayed with that job as long as i did if they were constantly looking for something for me to do.
 
My service has a no-sleeping policy regardless of whether you're on a 12 or 24 hour shift. I've been told many different stories from co-workers as to what the original cause was for the creation of this, most involving a crew that was sent to a scheduled pickup point ahead of time then took a nap, not waking up to the alarm they'd set on their cellular phones or a crew not responding to a radio call. In any case, getting caught sleeping is an instant write-up.

Our day crews never get any downtime, and dispatch likes to stack calls so it's very likely we'll go to work and have a patient at all times on our shift. (IE: Take a patient to the hospital, and get another patient returning to a nursing home with yet another patient coming out of the nursing home to another facility that also happens to be sending someone out). The night crew (which is what I work) tends to only do rescues and there are substantially fewer of those calls than during in the day, so we tend to get a lot of downtime. There's not much to do during that time--some people study. My partner and I watch movies on my laptop or chat with another crew that gets posted in the same area as us. We have no supervisors that are regularly on midnights, so many people get away with the occasional naps.

We actually see many of our supervisors (they often work 4AM-4PM) asleep in their trucks in various parking lots before the day gets busy. I've been tempted to snap a photo a few times...
 
Buzz said:
My service has a no-sleeping policy regardless of whether you're on a 12 or 24 hour shift.
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i wouldnt even take that job, or would quit immediatley after finding out about it.
 
Buzz said:
My service has a no-sleeping policy regardless of whether you're on a 12 or 24 hour shift.
Click to expand...

That is such a negative policy. When it comes to safety there should be no exceptions. The service I work for has bedrooms for each of the 24 hour trucks and plenty of couches for the daytime only trucks. If not in the lounge you can go to your bedroom and do whatever when not on a call.

It is an expectation that crews will rest when not on a call or doing personal chores. As I allready posted we do have a few chores that take a short period of time.

We have a written policy stating that crews are expected to rest. It is even called the "safety nap policy". If anyone wants to see it I can try and post a copy.
 
KEVD18 said:
i wouldnt even take that job, or would quit immediatley after finding out about it.
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either that or eventually fall asleep at the wheel and sue the pants off the company.

ive always wanted to have my name on the side of a truck.
 
KEVD18 said:
i wouldnt even take that job, or would quit immediatley after finding out about it.
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It's the official policy. Very few people follow it. There's a joke among our employees. We refer to downtime as "study time" and napping as "studying".
 
Buzz said:
It's the official policy. Very few people follow it. There's a joke among our employees. We refer to downtime as "study time" and napping as "studying".
Click to expand...

its irrlevant whether or not the policy is enforced. that fact that the company has a policy that forbids sleeping on a 24hr shift tells me the company doesnt car about their employees either by intentionally making them miserable or by intentionally placing their lives at risk. either way, its not a company i would work one shift for.
 
Buzz said:
My service has a no-sleeping policy regardless of whether you're on a 12 or 24 hour shift.
Click to expand...

If this srvice were in the NWT the employment Standards Branch would investigate and levy administrative penalties against the service. As well the unions would not allow it. Here in Canada most EMS are union members.
 
Not allowing sleeping on 24s is dangerous, I would never do it.

Our company policy is that 24s are allowed to sleep on their 0800-0800 shift after 6pm assumming station chores are done (taking out the garbage, sweeping the floor/vaccuming the bunkroom). The main work area, showers and bathrooms are done by a contract custodial service but the custodial service is now allowed in the bunkrooms or the garage (which is cleaned by the mechanic crew). Day shift (those that do the 8 hour, 10 hour, 12 hour, and 16 hour shifts) are generally not allowed to sleep, but there is no written rule that forbids it, its just that you are usually so busy that you can't.

In addition to EMS duties, if we are posted back at station, then the boss will sometimes ask us to help sweep the garage but not much more than that. We are of course required to check out our own trucks. For most crews this takes about 20 minutes, but for me since I'm a contingent and work on different trucks everytime, it can take upwards of 45 minutes to an hour, especially if the previous crew left the truck with items missing or if there are maintainence issues with the vehicle. ( I really wish we would get all the same trucks for our fleet, but alas, that is not cost effective)
The worst days, though, are those that start at 0530, and when we get in we are called out immediately which means I'm now on a truck i'm not 100% familiar with, that might have been last used a week ago by a crew that was running 2 hours late to get back so they didn't do a post run inspection, with another EMT who might also not have been on this truck in a month. I specifically recall one of those days where our morning truck check didn't get completed until 4pm, and even at that point we wern't back at station so what we were missing wasn't imediately replacable. Luckily, my partner that day had worked on that same truck every shift for the last few months so she knew where everything was and had restocked most of the stuff after her return the previous day.
 
Each of the three companies I run with has a different policy.

The MICU has a policy of "You can sleep, as long as chores are done."

The paid BLS has a policy of "No more than four hours of sleep during an 8 or 16 hour shift." The paid BLS is only on 0800 - 0000, so there will never be a 24. Crew members are not allowed to sleep overnight at the station, except for myself and one other EMT (because we live out of the area and our bosses don't want us killing ourselves).

The volley BLS is basically... do whatever the hell you want. That's what's beautiful about volley :P

Not allowing crews to sleep? What do they expect us to do?
 
In my company, our down time is our down time. We can do whatever we want, as long as its legal and PG ( Yeah, Have to stipulate that because some crews took a special sort of shine to eachother and got busy on the stretcher.) We can run errands, sleep etc.

We have a couple 24 hour trucks with stations throughout the area (Like studio apartments with beds, couches, TVs and a workers comp poster.). Its an unspoken and non official rule that you dont crash before 10 :P We have no station duties because we have this nice man who is paid to clean the main station and make popcorn.
 
My old company also had no real rules about sleeping. The 24 hour units were stationed out of motels (common for the area actually), so there was no real concern about chores. The 12 hour cars were all posted and it was almost unheard of to see a supervisor during a shift. As such, as long as you responded to your calls, it didn't matter if you were sleeping or watching a movie or what ever.
 
"My service has a no-sleeping policy regardless of whether you're on a 12 or 24 hour shift."


Wow, I would not take that job if I were on a 24hr shift. That is not safe at all, being up 24hrs straight at work is just rediculous. I hope that something is brought up to management about this...:wacko:
 
When I was given the official tour for the program I will be in, I was specifically told you can do pretty much whatever pleases you in your down time. They do not monitor any of this. All the stations are equiped with bunks or bedrooms, tv, computers, etc. I think it will be great study time for the duration of school or to workout, whatever. As long as you are doing your job when you are called and all the paperwork etc is done I don't think they care.
 
Another related question. For our calls that aren't runs to the ER, we don't have to finish writing the report before our next call, and oftentimes for interfacility transports, the dispatchers know this and will call us out for the next one even if the report isn't done yet. Usually we'll have time to get the narrative and numbers down, but not the run times. Our supervisors are usually unhappy with us writing the reports once we get done for the day since they feel that adds on to overtime, something they don't enjoy paying for when not necessary. Usually the quickest way to do the run times though is just to get a rpintout from the dispatcher when we get back and while the truck is being washed/cleaned, its is quick and easy for the other person to finish writing all the reports for the day.

I know of some people at some services who just don't clear the incident until their report is written. How do you guys operate? Do you finish writing the report before clearing and marking inservice?
 
I always wrote at least the basics on my reports and filled in the details when we had down time or were back at the station. 99% of the time we were cleared back to the station with an hour left in our shift. Then we would sit down, get our our pagers with our runs times, and start working.
 
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