Nurse working unpaid time+back to back shifts- Legal?

bob_dob

Hi,
A good friend's girlfriend is a nurse who is having a bad time of it.
Her shifts are 9pm - 7am, 7am - 2.30pm and 1.30pm - 9.30pm and sometimes 7am - 9.30pm.
She quite often has to work the 7am to 9.30pm shift twice on the trot. Plus, more annoyingly, being as there is a 'changeover' between her shift and the next, she has to stay on between an hour and 90 minutes which is unpaid.

Please can someone tell me are the 7am to 9.30am shifts legal and is there anything she can do regarding the 90 minute unpaid changeover?

getmore4less

please fix you am's and pm's

nursing is one of the exception to the full WTD allthough they should try to give the relevent breaks.

The extra hours should be paid allthough fairly common for them not to be.

Total hours for the month will be around the contractual + overtime so allthough the schedule may have B2B long days there is usualy plenty of time off in the week/month.

If it is a big issue then they need to speak to the person doing the off duty and try to fix it. escalating to manager level if needed.

It does however sound like the current shift patterns at her place are not right ifthe handovers are not managed properly.

trishandbubs

those shifts are perfectly normal in nursing but she can request doing short days only but would have to do five a week where as if you do long shifts its normally 3-4 days a week so great time off.

There is no reason for a hand over taking that long, if they are managed correctly. The nurses coming in on the shift should be there in time that the hand over is done and ready to start within 10 minutes of their shift starting. This doesnt always happen as most people like to chat and so it takes longer, or they are not managed correctly.

Nursing is one of those careers where you know its not 9-5 and the chances of getting your breaks, away on time etc is not always going to happen.

Cherry_Bomb

bob_dob wrote: »

Hi,
A good friend's girlfriend is a nurse who is having a bad time of it.
Her shifts are 9pm - 7am, 7am - 2.30pm and 1.30pm - 9.30pm and sometimes 7am - 9.30pm.

Long days are the norm in nursing.

bob_dob wrote: »

She quite often has to work the 7am to 9.30pm shift twice on the trot.

Again completely normal. I love getting long days on the trot, means more days off for the rest of the week!

bob_dob wrote: »

Plus, more annoyingly, being as there is a 'changeover' between her shift and the next, she has to stay on between an hour and 90 minutes which is unpaid.

90 minutes is completely ridiculous. Are you sure this is true? I've been on a lot of wards where handover has taken up to half an hour, then another hour is spent catching up on paperwork that should have been done during the shift. I'm not saying it's your friends fault but it does happen a lot.

bob_dob wrote: »

Please can someone tell me are the 7am to 9.30am shifts legal and is there anything she can do regarding the 90 minute unpaid changeover?

She needs to talk to whoevers in charge on the oncoming shift. There's got to be a reason handover is taking so long.