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Dear Todd,
Speaking as someone who has worked a schedule of 7, twelve hour shifts in a row, I will have to go against this one. I worked this schedule for a year, and must say that my safety, professional attitude and physical health ALL suffered, thus the patient care quality decreased significantly. I HIGHLY recommend going against this schedule.
I am currently in a program where we work 3-12 hour shifts one week, then 2-24s the next week for a bi-weekly paycheck.
It works like this. We work with only two 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute lunch period on our twelve hour shifts. We are not allowed to rest, and if not on a transport, we assist the ICU/ED.
On the 24's, we work from 0900-2300 with two 30 minute lunch periods, and two 15 minute breaks. If the ICU is slow or transports are slow, we are allowed to rest in "downtime" in our call rooms between 1400 and 1600 hours. After 2300, we again retire to our call room where we intend to sleep from 2300 thru 0900. We are paid for 18 hours for 0900-2300, and if we are not called out between 2300 and 0900, we ONLY get 18 hours of pay but are in house for 24. Now, if after 2300 we are called out and do not get 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep, we get paid for 24 hours even if the call that disrupts the 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep is a 20 minute flight, or even if it gets cancelled before we depart our helipad. Bottom line is if we are woken for any duty, even if only 5 minutes, and they've interrupted our 5 hours of sleep, we get the 24 hours paid.
This seems to work very well for us. If you are not called out at night, you end up with 72 hour paycheck, as you get 3-12's one week and 2-18s the next. But if you are called out you get two 24's and three 12s for an 84 hour paycheck.
Hope this helps!
P.R. Adams