Hi Morgan, I work for an ACT Team, Assertive Community Treatment for clients with major mental health problems. It may not be the same kind of setting as you are in but this is our situation.
I am a single OT on the team, we have 3 nurses, 5 social workers, 1 peer support worker, a psychiatrist and a manager. We have approximately 90 clients, and this number will climb to 100 over the next two years. They all live in the community and recieve much of their care in their homes. About 70% of our job is generic, all diciplines do the same thing, delivering meds and care to clients in the community. Then of course we provide care using our dicipline specific skills for the other approx. 30% of the work. The psychiatrist and manager are on call 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The rest of us do one evening shift, noon to 8pm, and are then on call until 8am the next morning. We also do one weekend a month. It adds up to 7 days in one week, once per month. After the seven days we get the Monday and Tuesday off and then back to work for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If there is a long weekend, then we can end up doing 8 or 9 days in a row, 3 or 4 days off and then only 2 or 1 day(s) on before the following weekend. We are paid a small hourly amount extra for the weekend and on call work. The advantage of having all diciplines doing the generic work is that we all get to know the clients very well. So when people are away, sick, or off for other reasons, the work continues pretty smoothly. What I think makes it work really well for us is that we are a very cohesive team, and we all like the different shifts. We were hired into the situation, so we all knew what we were getting into. The research on the ACT team model shows it to be very successful and cost effective. I can imagine that having this kind of scheduling imposed could create a lot of upset. But in your situation, is the proposal that you all work 7 days per week and then get 3 to 7 days off? Or what are the specifics of the proposal? Hope this is of use. Aine Suttle O.T. Reg.(Ont.) --- Morgan Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Our Service is proposing that all therapy staff work > 7 days. We within a > intermediate care setting and we are wondering if > anybody else works 7 days > and what shift pattern that works. > > What evidence is there that doing therapy 7 days a > week works and what > continuity it brings and if the therapist keeps > changing? > > > Steve > > -- > Unsubscribe? > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Change options? > www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com > > Archive? > www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > Help? > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Unsubscribe? [EMAIL PROTECTED] Change options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Help? [EMAIL PROTECTED]
