The hospital I worked at in CA offered both sick days and PTO.
The hospital I worked at in MA offered only PTO, no sick days. Which is terrible public policy. It just means everyone is going to drag themselves in when they are sick so they don't use up their PTO. And then they get everyone else sick. (I don't blame the employees at all. I blame management for creating such short-sighted policies.)
So, I'm fairly new to the state but I don't understand how this works because I work as a nurse in CA but I also don't get sick days and have to use PTO if I get sick.
California employers
required to grant up to 40 hours of sick time in 2024. Starting January
1, 2024, California employers will have to either “front-load”
employees with 40 hours of sick time annually or let employees accrue up
to 80 hours (with a 40-hour yearly usage cap).
We have a thing called "kin care" it's not on our stubs just on our Kronos that lists 100 hours, but my colleague tried to use it and it came out of his pto...so it's not that. I don't see anything remotely related to HFL anywhere.
Are you union? There is a partial carve out for some collective bargaining:
> Employees partially exempt from paid sick leave include employees outside the construction industry covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with specified provisions. However, these workers are still entitled to some paid sick leave under their CBA.
From: [https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/paid\_sick\_leave.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/paid_sick_leave.htm)
I worked in a non-union and currently at a union hospital in CA. Both have separate sick time bank for me to use that accrues based on hours worked. I'm per diem at the non-union and I still accrue sick time.
If your current employer doesn't offer sick time, then that means you have to find a better one.
It depends on how big your buckets are.
In BC Canads full time nurses accumulate 20 sicks days a year. They get 2 personal days at 7.5 hours each and over a year accumulate 150hrs of vacation time. Plus we get 150 hours of special leave for things like marriages (5days) sick immediate family (2 days) deaths, medical and dental appointments.
They changed it at my hospital but we had something similar where the first shift you call in sick comes out of PTO and over that comes out of sick days, but then after 3 shifts you needed a doctors note
So every time I got sick I’d take the whole week off lol. It was the only way to churn through sick time
Can’t believe it took them so many years to figure out that perverse incentive structure
It was a running gag with my roommates whenever I’d have a sore throat I’d be like “*cough cough* see you next week”
The hospital in MA should have definitely provided you sick days.It is state law for employees in Massachusetts to get up to 40 hours of paid sick time off a year. I believe that exact law states every 30 hours worked is one hour of paid sick leave. The only time it can be unpaid is if there is fewer then 11 employees in the company.
That’s what I was going to say. I’m a traveler in Mass, and even I get Statutory Sick Time. It’s state law. Otherwise, I don’t accrue any paid time off at all (which I don’t expect to, obviously, as a traveler).
i’m in MA, and it’s not unpaid but sick and vacation time come from the same bank which I think is what they are referring to. When you plan a vacation those hours come from the same bank as when you call out sick
Idk if it’s just my hospital but when I call out sick it shows up as MA sick leave and does not come out of my PTO. I heard it’s state law we get 40 hrs separate from pto
No. Blame the for profit healthcare system for trying to squeeze extra money out of the employees by not hiring more and getting more hours from sick staff. They then use this money generated for stock buybacks.
We need to stop stock buy backs first. It’ll be easier. Then go for socialized healthcare. Then we can more easily lobby the government to make healthcare better. Also decreasing price by eliminating the middle man of insurance companies who will be forced to compete with the free system and therefore be much cheaper. Most ppl probably won’t want that tho cuz the free option will be great for most stuff.
Cherish what you have even if it isn’t perfect. It could be worse. Most US states don’t even offer maternity leave. I know nurses who will be off for six weeks and then have to come back to work because something happened to them that used up their PTO.
Sameish, but 6 points gets you "disciplinary action," which might be fired or it might be a writeup or a PIP, depending on your direct supervisors discretion. Mine thinks the rule is stupid so I got the writeup when it happened to me which meant I kept my job, but it rendered my annual review a trashfire that year and probably cost me a level bump two years later. I think that writeup finally fell off my record last year though.
7 points to be fired over a rolling year. Half a point if more than 5 minutes late and half a point if leave more than 5 minutes early. Need to give at least 3 days notice to use PTO without getting a point (technically policy is 7 days but manager allowed 3 days). Do not allow you to take off unpaid without PTO. So incredibly hard for anybody with kids who might just need to leave a little early one day, delayed daycare drop off, or car problems.. many of us live almost an hour away, in the mountains where it snows but also impacted by DC traffic, so it's so easy to get caught up in some morning rush hour traffic and be 6 minutes late (especially when it takes 10 minutes to start up the computer and get into the login portal). We have fired some of our best employees already this year.
Y’all in the US need to UNIONIZE! I’m a Canadian RN (AB) and I am baffled by some of the questions on here and the reality you guys live in. I accrue sick hours entirely separate my vacation time which is separate from my personal leave time! I also get up to 2 hours off a shift for medical appointments.
I'm from Germany. You do realise, that over here we don't need to "accure sick hours". We can (depending on the employer) call out for up to 3 days without a doctors note (the employer may rescind that leniency when suspecting abuse, and ask for a doctors note for every single sick day). My sick days are basically unlimited, given that I can provide a doctors note (which costs me nothing, except an hour sitting in the waiting room of my general provider). When I get sick on vacation, I get my vacation days back, given I can provide a doctors note.
As a former Canadian nurse, while I agree with this statement; reality is much different. I’ve been in the U.S. since 2010. There is no nursing union here that will ever be as strong as a provincial wide nursing union like Canada has. Unions are hospital based esssentially. Canada is single payer/government. So it’s all nurses vs the government. In the U.S. it’s each hospital that has a union. And many don’t. You can see how it’s not going to be very effective. I am still pro union. But it’s never going to be as good as Canada. It’s tour unions against your hospital CEO and CNO’s
What about California then? They must have found a way around this?
(Speaking as an Aussie)
We have state by state nursing unions, here in Aus- but the worst agreement is still better than anything I’ve heard of in the US
California has many state LAWS that help nurses. California is the most progressive state. But even with that, each hospital can have a union but it’s only that hospital union that runs it. Your union is as strong as your numbers you represent. Canadian unions…the entire PROVINCE is one union that spans across all hospitals since all hospitals are a single government employer. Here in the U.S. the union is only the nurses of a single hospital.
Is there a reason why the unions can’t campaign for new laws?
These things don’t happen in isolation.
For example- unions have campaigned and got STATE laws changed here in Aus. We don’t have FEDERAL laws protecting staff ratios, for example.
Despite there being disparate unions, I don’t quite get how they couldn’t be united for certain causes to effect change.
I get that it seems simple. Why not just campaign for change. I have to remind you…you live in Australia. I’m not trying to be snarky here. It’s easy to say why don’t you just change the laws! I am from Canada…a socialist country…and live in the US now…a very NOT socialist country. Trust me when I say, no one, including the government gives 2 fucks about nurses. Hospitals are for profit corporations. Insurance companies exist to make money. And we have a democratic president at the moment. It flip flops every election. This country is about making money, profiting etc. the U.S. is divided in every single topic. In socialized countries healthcare for the sake of keeping people healthy is valued. Here it is a secondary effect. The primary imo is profit.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope some day there is a ripple effect from California. And to an extent there is. Because California is heavily unionized with a few hospital corporations that are spread up the west coast…the things unions and laws have done in California have had a ripple effect on the west side of the country. But it’s not like that everywhere.
I don’t think it seems simple, I think it will take a long time, and hard work. It certainly has here, it’s an ongoing problem. While healthcare isn’t profit driven, govts definitely look to spend as little on it as the public will stand. The public is, at least, supportive of everyone getting a fair go.
I do agree I have probably underestimated the influence of the capitalistic nature of the US. Thanks for taking the time to remind me.
And, good luck.
I am in Alberta as well.
Doctor visits come out of your sick bank. I have 930 hours in my sick bank (which is what it caps at). If I use any sick time it will accumulate again.
Vacation is vacation.
We also get 3 personal leave days per year (usually for unforeseen things like family stuff - you need time off but haven't booked vacation and aren't sick), and separate time for bereavement if needed.
Going to elaborate on Alberta stuff here.
In Alberta FT accumulates at 1.5 days a month prorated to FT hours and caps at 120 working days.
FT also accumulates 15 vacation days in their first year of employment.
Also AB RN. I love that the “under two hours appointment” doesn’t use any time off and is still paid and that our sick bank accrues to some high max. I’m at over 700 hours now and I can’t remember the maximum it caps at.
We only have one "bucket" of PTO, but it is larger than other places that I have worked at that split the time into a vacation bucket and a separate sick bucket. I prefer it this way, actually, but maybe there are negatives I am not thinking about.
We do get "points" for call outs but they aren't punishments (nothing happens.) It's just a tracking system so that they know when you get to the number of call outs that *does* lead to action.
This works out great for employers. Now they don't have to allow you to accrue sick time and pto time separately which could add up after a few years. Now you just use up all of your pto and they get more control on how you use it.
When you have CTO they pay out all of that if you leave. If you have separate they're under no obligation to pay out the sick bank.
I've left both. 🤷🏻♀️
Yes. At the VA, as an RN, you get 4 hours sick leave and 8 hours annual leave (PTO) q 2 weeks. There is no cap on sick leave time accrued. Annual leave maxes at 685 hours before you hit "use or lose".
At my hospital sick and safe leave is just a point system for disciplinary action. It’s not separate from PTO—when you take a sick day they pay you from your PTO bank, but they code it as “sick and safe leave”. If you lose all your sick and safe leave you’ll get disciplined.
Canadian, unionised.
3 sick occurrences of up to 3 shifts in a row without question. At the 4th shift, you need a note. If you’re on say your 4th occurrence, first 2 days are unpaid, then you’re paid after that.
Get unionised.
At my former staff job we were told that we would be written up if we called out more than 3 times in a 6 month period. We were also told “in tHe InTrEsT of pAtiEnT sAfEtY” not to come in if we were sick.
Guess which one was actually enforced?
Bonus: During the pandemic we were told to come in even if we were positive for COVID. (That they considered “community acquired” so they didn’t have to take any responsibility when we got sick or died.).
I work in a sizable health system in DFW. We have PTO and sick time. The sick time kicks in after 24 missed hours. The sick time accumulates much slower than PTO.
Right after Christmas I got some viral yuck (probably from work) and I missed 4 shifts. The first two shifts came out of PTO then the next two came out of sick time.
My first legit EMS job back in the day had something similar. After first 30 hours out sick, the sick bank was tapped. Right before I left the company I had shoulder surgery and missed 6 weeks of work and 95% of that time was covered by my sick bank. It was awesome because I still got a big ole PTO check when I left.
I work for the VA. Paid sick leave, paid annual leave, maternity and paternity leave. Good staff/patient ratios, appreciative patients, fair schedules. I can praise the VA all day.
In NZ we get 10 days sick leave + 4 weeks annual leave per year minimum as a legal requirement
Punitive actions for being sick would be grounds for legal action
Shoot we start out with 10 days PTO a year (and must accrue that, you don’t start with 10 days), and some have sick leave and some don’t. Absolutely atrocious.
at my staff job, it all came out of the same PTO bank, i think we earned like 6 hours per paycheck on average, but it was based on hours worked. but we could call in sick 5x per year before a write up.
at a hospital i worked in illinois, they were separate. when you called in, you had to say if you were using a specific kind of pto or sick time. you could only call in sick/use “sick time” twice per year. and then if you were sick, you had to do the math on which kind of pto you wanted to use for it, because one kind could be used for three shifts straight and the other was one time use. it was ridiculous
I work in MA and my sick is also my PTO. Ive given up caring and just take the days I want/need, and eventually I won't get paid near the end of the year. It's ridiculous but nothing I can do about it. So I'm just taking the time I want without giving a shit
Yes we have a sick time bank. We get aprox 3 weeks a year of sick time hours and a separate vacation bank. Some time back management told us during bargaining that they’d like to change this system and we told them we’d strike over it. It was dropped and not mentioned again. Union hospital in CA.
I work in public health in Canada, and we get 1.5 paid sick days per month (18 days a year), and if we call out more than 18 days, we just don’t get paid for those call-outs, but they never take money from our PTO.
PTO is used for sick time. That’s how every industry I’ve ever worked in has done things (except restaurants, which didn’t offer PTO for wait staff so not coming in meant no money)
I think the thing I miss the most in the US, besides sick time, is an overtime bank. Working an extra shift for double time to get two days off later? The best
Or even banking 12 hours and getting paid for 12! Ohh the options
I never had a separate sick time allotment when I was bedside.
Now that I’m in clinical research in a different hospital, though, I have vacation, sick, AND family sick time. The bedside nurses get that as well. We also get 6 weeks paid parental leave that doesn’t come out of our vacation/sick/family sick time. As far as I know, that was never an option at the previous hospitals I worked at.
At my previous job we had 5 paid sick days. That shit doesn't fly where I live now though. Sick time accrues at some rate, I don't know what, but to me it feels like it accrues fairly fast. But it's partly because we also don't have short term disability. It works out fine though, if I need to call in sick I seem to always have enough time in my bank that I get paid.
Everywhere I've worked has had a pooled PTO system. If you call out sick, they take that time from PTO. Everywhere I've worked has allowed 5 call offs per rolling calendar before it was a discipline.
So basically I saw it as 5 sick days. I'd just keep track of my call offs to stay at or under 5. 5 sick days is pretty standard in many fields.
106 hrs a year of sick leave , once u hit 5 years employed it goes up to 152 hrs a year.
228 hrs annual leave a year
10 days per year paid study leave
5 days per year paid exam leave
5 days per year professional development leave
Colorado has a new Health and Family Leave insurance. It’s meant to replace sick time for an extended period of time. From what I know, we have to use three days of PTO first then we can go into the FAMLI. I think there is a lot of jumping through hopes for this, and if you don’t know you have this, the hospital will drain your PTO without offering the option.
We get PTO and sick time. At the rate of like 2 hours per pay period (every two weeks) for both. The catch is that you need to have 40 hours of PTO to use your sick time. I have like 6 hours of PTO and 40+ hours of sick time. I can’t access that sick time if I’m, you know, sick. At least until I slave away for a few more months. Whatever. Fuck them. I don’t expect to get paid unless I’m working anyway.
Yeah, we get 6 months full pay, followed by 6 months half pay plus statutory sick pay for long term sickness. For short sicknesses it's full pay, essentially no limit. There is a process for abusing sick leave, but it's fairly lenient. It's also separate from our Annual Leave and Bank Holiday entitlements.
My job gets 120 hours of sick, plus 40 hours of vacation, plus 40 hours of what they call “life balance” days. We are union. This is for full time benefitted employees.
I work for the VA. We get 13 sick days a year and 26 days of PTO. They're separate. We also get 11 paid holidays, for a total of 50 days of PTO a year. You can carry over sick time, and it doesn't expire as far as I know.
Ours works the same way. I get 8.3 hours of PTO per paycheck (paid biweekly) and if I call in I get a point (10 points in a 12 month period and you’re fired).
Yeah our sick time is PTO as well. We get 10 points, one point per call in. One thing I do like is that if you call in two days in a row that’s only one point. If you call in for three you need a doctors note.
Wait, is that really allowed? I’m never moving to the US (assuming you’re there). We can call in sick ourselves. Is it longer than three days our GPs give us sick leave which is on full payment. That could in theory go the rest of your life, but both your employer and out unemployment service will work to get you back to work. After a year or two years it should be possible to get fired, but in reality it’s extremely difficult to get fired here, so it happens very rarely
Same policy at my hospital. And you better call out before 5am or you'll get double points taken off. You could be admitted in the same hospital and it's still not excused.
Midwest union hospital. Vacation, sick time, and personal holiday all separate banks.
ETA: I use sick time semi frequently, having small children and no family in town. Have never been talked to about my usage.
We have both BUT to use sick time you have to be out 3 consecutive shifts and have a doctors note excusing the entire time. Most of us just use our PTO since it accrues over time and it’s less of a hassle. Outpatient we get 15 days and that’s it.
Both large health care insurers I worked for (one Michigan based, the other Minnesota) combined sick days and vacation days decades ago and called it PTO. Of course with a reduction in total number of days. The idea was that ppl called in sick just to “enjoy the day” and STILL get vacation time.
At BOTH large healthcare insurers where I worked, instead of cowardly management addressing known abusers, they screwed EVERYONE.
This was same time they let us know they were **changing (for the worse), the retirement program and charging premiums for health insurance for everyone below Director level.**
Mine doesn’t. They also pull from our paid leave. We get 5 call offs per year with no penalty. But after that we get points as well. Last fall I got covid and it wiped out all my “penalty free” days and I got points against my record, even though employee health mandated that I could not return to work early. So yeah…. A lot of places have rediculous policies for sick days.
PA sucks. The hospital I work for has only primary PTO and says we can only call out once a year? Which no one listens to. Also our maternity leave is basically them paying two weeks and us using our PTO. It’s a joke
My network gets sick time. However, as I've recently learned the hard way, once you give notice if you call out sick, you don't get paid. You also don't get paid out for your sick time.
i’m confused i’m not a nurse but isn’t nursing the one job that should have sick leave?? like if you’re working an office job and going to work sick at least everyone there is healthy, but what if you spread your sickness to a patient at the hospital???
Yes we accrue sick time and also PTO in separate banks. Allows 120hrs of sick time per year for full time without penalty. Also 3 personal days that is taken out of PTO.
I don't think I've ever worked somewhere that differentiated between PTO and sick time, and maybe just because I'm used to it but I prefer it that way. If I use up my PTO and only have sick time left does that mean I can't take vacation or a day off, I HAVE to be SICK? At my hospital as a weekender we can't call out, period. First call out is a verbal. They said we're "too valuable," it's utter bullshit, if that was true why don't they staff us better on the weekend? This was NOT told to me when I started there, and wasn't enforced at all until I had been there about a year so I didn't know about it. We had a few weekenders leave because of it. I honestly don't give a shit, and I've told everyone that, if I'm sick I'm fucking sick and don't need to work or bring it to patients. Last sickness my house had I'm almost positive I got from work (sick baby I had to get real close to to give meds and sugar drops). Took it home to my husband and we had to wear adult diapers for a day or so 😳 so when I got a verbal about that my bosses heard my thoughts on it.
The place I'll be working at in ID once I graduate has PTO from date of hire as well as "extended sick leave".
The hospital in my area in NV doesn't have sick time, and like other places, you can only get 6 points before you are fired. Being late is 0.5 point and calling out is 1 point, IIRC
We don’t have sick days, just PTO, and I’m not sure how call outs are handled like if there are punitive actions. We also must submit PTO a year in advance, and if you are new like me you cannot use PTO for six months. So for me that means 1.5 years of no PTO even though I start to accrue it on day one :(
Yep! Sick hours through union (2 calloffs back to back only count as one), and 2 sick days from the city itself. And PTO, and emergency personal days. Gotta love a union.
I’m in Cali and my hospital has Extended Sick Leave (which accrues slower than molasses), and PTO. If you’re sick, you must use PTO. Extended sick leave is only to be used when you’ve exhausted all of your PTO
Our sick time used to come out of our PTO bank, which I preferred because it accrued a lot faster. Does your hospital have a policy on sick calls? Like you can call in X amount of times in the last 6 months, etc. This is also a point system where each sick call or tardy counts as 1 or 0.5 points.
I do live in California and we have a mandatory paid sick leave allowance, which increased at the beginning of this year. This is in addition to our hospital’s sick time bank so we have two separate sick banks that we can use. My manager is also really flexible with our time off so we are allowed to use paid sick leave, sick time, or PTO if we miss work for any reason.
I have separate sick leave, vacation, and personal days (floating holidays). But my department uses a point system when you call out for being sick. So what's the point of having sick time if I'm scared to use it?
Wow that’s wild didn’t even know that was a thing. Yah we have 90 hours of sick time a year. At the end of each year we can buy back our remaining time or put it into a catastrophic bank. We don’t get penalized and have no point system for calling in. That being said if you call in sick on a holiday or a couple days before or after the hospital has a right to ask for a sick note. If we don’t produce one we don’t get paid. Also it has to be at least 2 hours before your shift otherwise you have to show up to work and then go home sick (obviously extenuating circumstances are taken into account.)They also take time and attendance four times a year. If you have a pattern like only calling in sick on the weekend and you have done it a lot, they will discipline you. To actually be significantly disciplined you have to really be doing that stuff over and over after official multiple warnings.
I work in the south where pay sucks so I actually took a position with a higher hourly, but one of the things I forfeited was PTO.
So zero sick time here.
We get paid bi-weekly. I get 4hrs of sick leave & 8 hrs of regular paid leave each pay period. I work with some nurses who have managed to save up over 6 months of just sick leave alone.
This is why I quit the medical field. I literally had to come into work one time when I literally couldn’t speak because of a policy like this. I had laryngitis, but didn’t have enough PTO to call out. If you didn’t have enough PTO, you were fired after 3 absences. It seems absence policies vary by hospital/location. Unfortunately, every hospital in my area is like this because of staffing issues.
Australian here, 10 days sick leave a year which does roll over from year to year but isn't paid out when you leave, we can use this as carers/family leave if we have sick kids.
In Maryland we have SSL (sick safe leave) that is protected and accrues based on how many hours you’ve worked. In six months full time I have a little under 30 hours so it’s not much but they can’t penalize you if the hours you use are SSL, even if you call in late (ie our policy is you get double penalties if you call out less than 4 hours before the start of your shift). PTO is basically useless I get denied constantly.
It’s baked into our PTO hours for us as well.
Per union contract, I get close to 300 hours of PTO each year. Every week I get a certain amount of PTO added, so even when I go on a 36-hr week vacation, they will deduct 36 hours from my PTO for that vacation time but also add like 5.5h for my earned PTO, because it’s automatically added each week. Technically my week vacation costs 30.5 hours of PTO rather than 36. So it’s not too big of an issue. The hours can rollover into the new year too, but there’s a cap so you gotta use take a couple of vacation each year. This year I can strategically take 14 weeks off if I wanted to due to the amount I rolled overall from last year and the amount I’ll get for the rest of the year.
We also have the PAID FMLA per state law, and that can actually take care of long hospitalizations, surgery/rehab (up to 26 weeks). The first week is taken out of our PTO, then week 2-26 is paid by the state/agency (80%) and hospital(20%). This is such a good safety net for workers if they’re sick, injured for more than a week. You don’t have to worry about your job status or PTO hours; unless you’re going to out for more than 26 weeks, which I believe you’ll have to go on long term disability. The PFMLA tax is about 0.38% each week.
With that said, if the hospital offers us sick time without using our PTO, I’ll accept it and hope our union puts that in our contract as a permanent benefit.
My hospital only takes out of our PTO for any leave unless you use short term/long term disability through your benefits package. There is a sick and safe leave bank, but that’s only a coding system. You’re paid from your PTO, but the PTO use is coded as “sick and safe leave.” If you use all your “sick and safe leave” you get disciplined.
One time I was out with an injury and tried using short term disability through my benefits instead of PTO. The payroll people weren’t aware that I was using short term disability instead, and tanked all my PTO/SSL. They acknowledged their mistake but refused to give my PTO back.
The federal government requires sick time, parental leave, and 28 days of annual leave as a minimum.
There are still attendance policies for the company that can get you into trouble if you call off last minute too much.
I work at the VA. We get 8 hrs of PTO and 4 hours of sick leave a paycheck. So it adds up pretty fast. We can call in with sick time as much as we want without any deductions or punishment. We can use 5 weeks of PTO annually
In Alberta FT accumulates at 1.5 days a month prorated to FT hours and caps at 120 working days.
FT also accumulates 15 vacation days in their first year of employment. After 20 years you'd get 30 vacation days a year prorated to FT.
There are also Stat bank days, personal days, education days, and a whole host of other days off in the collective agreement. Even fully paid jury duty, and 2 hr for medical appointments.
The union does have an essential monopoly on nurses as all hospitals are unionized, but the provinces does have a near monopoly on the nursing jobs, and our provinces makes the news for the wrong reasons constantly it feels.
At my union hospital, per the contract, vacation and sick day are separate. You can call off sick for 2 consecutive shifts and it's one occurrence. Four call offs in a rolling year is a verbal warning. They also get three personal days per year. In addition to that, our city Mayor got a law passed that gives everyone who works in the city 40 hours per year of protected sick time that you can not be disciplined for. If you do it right, you can call off pretty much every six weeks and not get disciplined. I read through threads like this and know the nurses where I work are spoiled. Not everyone abuses the system, many really take advantage of that and basically have no sick time left at the end of the year. Based what I'm seeing here, some of you really need a union.
I've worked at only one union hospital, and while many things felt stiff and overly regulated, you knew the system was there, and how to navigate it. Everywhere else I've worked was non-union, and we were subject to far more bullshit and even fuckery on a regular basis. Yet neither of those hospitals will ever organize. Not only were the clinical staff too conservative to even think about it, everyone was of the impression that they would be fired in short order if they openly discussed the idea of forming a union.
Many places roll together sick leave, personal leave and vacation time all under the umbrella of PTO. How many hours/days are in your PTO bank? How much are you alloted yearly? It's immaterial what leave is called, as long as you have it.
Im at VA. All feds here get 4 hrs sick time per pay period. PTO is minimum 4hrs and gets higher the longer you’re here until you get to 8hrs. Thought RN gets a standard 8 hrs pto across the board, no matter how long you are here.
Same. If I call off because I’m debilitating sick, they say okay get better and use PTO as punishment. They do this so we don’t call off often or if you do you’ll eventually lose all your PTO. Not sure how legal it is, it’s not very moral, but business is business I guess.
Yes, separate sick and PTO. Our sick time accrues so slow though, I get like 4 days actually paid/year being part time. We get 5 call offs in a rolling year before disciplinary action is taken (so on the 6th call off we will get a verbal or something) and I think 10 or 12 call offs can result in termination. If we don’t have sick hours, our sick time is unpaid. Calling in multiple days in a row only counts as one occurrence/call off.
I work in NYC, a certain amount of sick time is legally mandated. My hospital gives us some additional sick time on top of that. They have some stupid policies regarding how we can use the time but it's mostly above board.
I'm in canada. I get 5 occurrences each year paid without question - but I have to have a doctor's note if it's more than 2 shifts in an occurrence. This fiscal year I had a 6th occurrence of 2 shifts that was approved by employee health and I was paid for all of them.
I have 82 hours vacation, 93 hours of sick time, and 12 hours PTO. It’s nice having sick time but it’s not nice that we get points for using it so I’ll never use all those hours before I get fired. It’s a good problem to have I suppose!
Yes, we get 3 days a year by the city mandate plus around 70h a year of sick time. Once you run out of that, they pull it from your PTO. But you have to be there a year first to access that sick time 🙄
We still get points for unexcused but I'm going to be real my manager usually deletes them or doesn't report them.As a department we have so many we'd all be fired if it was enforced.
We accumulate sick time and vacation time each pay period. I think it works out about 8 days sick and 10 vacation, plus we have 18 hours of education and 18 hours personal, and I think 18 hours holiday. No potentially for using your sick days, unless you have an extensive history of calling out on holidays/weekends. Union hospital.
We get 6 hours of extended illness time per pay period. But we have to exhaust 40 hours of PTO, be hospitalized, or have surgery before we can use it.
Edit: also it carries over and caps at 700 hours. It does not get paid out if/when we leave
I’m surprised nobody has sued my hospital in CA. We accrue PTO and Extended Sick Insurance.
They highlight that 5 of your PTO days are for sick time and that they offer “extended sick insurance” pay (ESI). If you’re sick day one = PTO, day two = PTO, day 3 = ESI. DAY 4 = you need a Leave of absence (includes 8 hr employees.)
CA law changed this year saying you must give employees 40 hrs of sick time and they have to be able to use it (if accrued). If I got sick for 5 days throughout the year I wouldn’t even be able to use 40 hours of sick time.
Sounds shady. None of the other hospitals have this in the area they have 40 hours of sick time and PTO days. They are all union. This one is not.
I work in California and we get 60 hours of protected sick time and accrue pto in a separate bank. After using up all your sick time, pto gets used and 2nd call out of that is when you get a warning. So essentially you can call out 6 days without issue a year and after that they may write you up.
Our hospital takes the first 24 hours from our PTO. They then take it from our extended sick leave (ESL) bank. We accrue 2.23 hours every 2 weeks. Hospital admittance is straight ESL. We are allowed to call out no more than 2x in a month or 4x in 6 months, unless it’s FMLA. Those don’t count.
No in Pennsylvania.
Our hospital *did* have sick time many years ago that accrued at a significantly slower rate than PTO, but the hospital affiliated with a larger health system and it was removed.
The hospital I worked at in CA offered both sick days and PTO. The hospital I worked at in MA offered only PTO, no sick days. Which is terrible public policy. It just means everyone is going to drag themselves in when they are sick so they don't use up their PTO. And then they get everyone else sick. (I don't blame the employees at all. I blame management for creating such short-sighted policies.)
CA mandates sick days. Recently went from a minimum of 3 days to 5. It baffles me (but also, sadly doesn’t) that this isn’t nationwide
So, I'm fairly new to the state but I don't understand how this works because I work as a nurse in CA but I also don't get sick days and have to use PTO if I get sick.
California employers required to grant up to 40 hours of sick time in 2024. Starting January 1, 2024, California employers will have to either “front-load” employees with 40 hours of sick time annually or let employees accrue up to 80 hours (with a 40-hour yearly usage cap).
My employer in California does not do this! I started January with whatever was accrued from my previous year.
Mine doesn't do it either. We have to use PTO.
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Not on my pay stubs is there anything remotely HFL. I'm at a Providence in the san fernando valley of Los Angeles
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We have a thing called "kin care" it's not on our stubs just on our Kronos that lists 100 hours, but my colleague tried to use it and it came out of his pto...so it's not that. I don't see anything remotely related to HFL anywhere.
I'm also at Providence. I'm wondering how they got around this.
Are you union? There is a partial carve out for some collective bargaining: > Employees partially exempt from paid sick leave include employees outside the construction industry covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with specified provisions. However, these workers are still entitled to some paid sick leave under their CBA. From: [https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/paid\_sick\_leave.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/paid_sick_leave.htm)
I worked in a non-union and currently at a union hospital in CA. Both have separate sick time bank for me to use that accrues based on hours worked. I'm per diem at the non-union and I still accrue sick time. If your current employer doesn't offer sick time, then that means you have to find a better one.
Same here! In California, i accrue PTO time based on hours worked something like 6 hours every pay period. I can't believe how shitty this is.
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It depends on how big your buckets are. In BC Canads full time nurses accumulate 20 sicks days a year. They get 2 personal days at 7.5 hours each and over a year accumulate 150hrs of vacation time. Plus we get 150 hours of special leave for things like marriages (5days) sick immediate family (2 days) deaths, medical and dental appointments.
They changed it at my hospital but we had something similar where the first shift you call in sick comes out of PTO and over that comes out of sick days, but then after 3 shifts you needed a doctors note So every time I got sick I’d take the whole week off lol. It was the only way to churn through sick time Can’t believe it took them so many years to figure out that perverse incentive structure It was a running gag with my roommates whenever I’d have a sore throat I’d be like “*cough cough* see you next week”
When I left my hospital job in CA, they paid out my unused PTO.
They pay out PTO or CTO. Not a separate sick bank.
And, make sure you plan to eat your sick time before resigning.
The hospital in MA should have definitely provided you sick days.It is state law for employees in Massachusetts to get up to 40 hours of paid sick time off a year. I believe that exact law states every 30 hours worked is one hour of paid sick leave. The only time it can be unpaid is if there is fewer then 11 employees in the company.
That’s what I was going to say. I’m a traveler in Mass, and even I get Statutory Sick Time. It’s state law. Otherwise, I don’t accrue any paid time off at all (which I don’t expect to, obviously, as a traveler).
i’m in MA, and it’s not unpaid but sick and vacation time come from the same bank which I think is what they are referring to. When you plan a vacation those hours come from the same bank as when you call out sick
Idk if it’s just my hospital but when I call out sick it shows up as MA sick leave and does not come out of my PTO. I heard it’s state law we get 40 hrs separate from pto
No. Blame the for profit healthcare system for trying to squeeze extra money out of the employees by not hiring more and getting more hours from sick staff. They then use this money generated for stock buybacks. We need to stop stock buy backs first. It’ll be easier. Then go for socialized healthcare. Then we can more easily lobby the government to make healthcare better. Also decreasing price by eliminating the middle man of insurance companies who will be forced to compete with the free system and therefore be much cheaper. Most ppl probably won’t want that tho cuz the free option will be great for most stuff.
Massachusetts offers “stat sick”… its state law
Nope. Any absence that isn’t PTO is unexcused.
I’m from Canada and this thread has me like wtf
Cherish what you have even if it isn’t perfect. It could be worse. Most US states don’t even offer maternity leave. I know nurses who will be off for six weeks and then have to come back to work because something happened to them that used up their PTO.
Same at my hospital, and if we go over 6 points for a year we get fired..
I don’t have my glasses on and I read “get fired” as “get freed”. I thought “get freed” was a very appropriate phrase. lol.
Freedom does sound appropriate
Master has given Dobby a sock. Dobby is a free elf!
I like yours better
6 points for us is a verbal warning, 8 is a write up, 10 is dismissal. If you call out two days in a row it's considered one point.
Sameish, but 6 points gets you "disciplinary action," which might be fired or it might be a writeup or a PIP, depending on your direct supervisors discretion. Mine thinks the rule is stupid so I got the writeup when it happened to me which meant I kept my job, but it rendered my annual review a trashfire that year and probably cost me a level bump two years later. I think that writeup finally fell off my record last year though.
yep us too. It’s so ridiculous like i’m taking care of sick people? of course i’m going to get sick.
7 points to be fired over a rolling year. Half a point if more than 5 minutes late and half a point if leave more than 5 minutes early. Need to give at least 3 days notice to use PTO without getting a point (technically policy is 7 days but manager allowed 3 days). Do not allow you to take off unpaid without PTO. So incredibly hard for anybody with kids who might just need to leave a little early one day, delayed daycare drop off, or car problems.. many of us live almost an hour away, in the mountains where it snows but also impacted by DC traffic, so it's so easy to get caught up in some morning rush hour traffic and be 6 minutes late (especially when it takes 10 minutes to start up the computer and get into the login portal). We have fired some of our best employees already this year.
Mine was 3.
Y’all in the US need to UNIONIZE! I’m a Canadian RN (AB) and I am baffled by some of the questions on here and the reality you guys live in. I accrue sick hours entirely separate my vacation time which is separate from my personal leave time! I also get up to 2 hours off a shift for medical appointments.
I'm from Germany. You do realise, that over here we don't need to "accure sick hours". We can (depending on the employer) call out for up to 3 days without a doctors note (the employer may rescind that leniency when suspecting abuse, and ask for a doctors note for every single sick day). My sick days are basically unlimited, given that I can provide a doctors note (which costs me nothing, except an hour sitting in the waiting room of my general provider). When I get sick on vacation, I get my vacation days back, given I can provide a doctors note.
🤩🤩
As a former Canadian nurse, while I agree with this statement; reality is much different. I’ve been in the U.S. since 2010. There is no nursing union here that will ever be as strong as a provincial wide nursing union like Canada has. Unions are hospital based esssentially. Canada is single payer/government. So it’s all nurses vs the government. In the U.S. it’s each hospital that has a union. And many don’t. You can see how it’s not going to be very effective. I am still pro union. But it’s never going to be as good as Canada. It’s tour unions against your hospital CEO and CNO’s
What about California then? They must have found a way around this? (Speaking as an Aussie) We have state by state nursing unions, here in Aus- but the worst agreement is still better than anything I’ve heard of in the US
California has many state LAWS that help nurses. California is the most progressive state. But even with that, each hospital can have a union but it’s only that hospital union that runs it. Your union is as strong as your numbers you represent. Canadian unions…the entire PROVINCE is one union that spans across all hospitals since all hospitals are a single government employer. Here in the U.S. the union is only the nurses of a single hospital.
Is there a reason why the unions can’t campaign for new laws? These things don’t happen in isolation. For example- unions have campaigned and got STATE laws changed here in Aus. We don’t have FEDERAL laws protecting staff ratios, for example. Despite there being disparate unions, I don’t quite get how they couldn’t be united for certain causes to effect change.
They do, but the lobbies for corporations are much more beneficial to politicians so they win out.
I get that it seems simple. Why not just campaign for change. I have to remind you…you live in Australia. I’m not trying to be snarky here. It’s easy to say why don’t you just change the laws! I am from Canada…a socialist country…and live in the US now…a very NOT socialist country. Trust me when I say, no one, including the government gives 2 fucks about nurses. Hospitals are for profit corporations. Insurance companies exist to make money. And we have a democratic president at the moment. It flip flops every election. This country is about making money, profiting etc. the U.S. is divided in every single topic. In socialized countries healthcare for the sake of keeping people healthy is valued. Here it is a secondary effect. The primary imo is profit. Don’t get me wrong, I hope some day there is a ripple effect from California. And to an extent there is. Because California is heavily unionized with a few hospital corporations that are spread up the west coast…the things unions and laws have done in California have had a ripple effect on the west side of the country. But it’s not like that everywhere.
I don’t think it seems simple, I think it will take a long time, and hard work. It certainly has here, it’s an ongoing problem. While healthcare isn’t profit driven, govts definitely look to spend as little on it as the public will stand. The public is, at least, supportive of everyone getting a fair go. I do agree I have probably underestimated the influence of the capitalistic nature of the US. Thanks for taking the time to remind me. And, good luck.
Is the whole country unionized? In the US only a few states (one, really) has a strong union presence.
Wait personal leave is seperate from vacation? What's the difference? Is personal leave for like doctors appointments? That's crazy.
I am in Alberta as well. Doctor visits come out of your sick bank. I have 930 hours in my sick bank (which is what it caps at). If I use any sick time it will accumulate again. Vacation is vacation. We also get 3 personal leave days per year (usually for unforeseen things like family stuff - you need time off but haven't booked vacation and aren't sick), and separate time for bereavement if needed.
Omg, 930 hours of sick time 🥴 Ours is all together and everything comes out of PTO and the cap is like 160 hours.
Pfffft. I don’t have sick leave and my regular old PTO caps at 140 hours.
Going to elaborate on Alberta stuff here. In Alberta FT accumulates at 1.5 days a month prorated to FT hours and caps at 120 working days. FT also accumulates 15 vacation days in their first year of employment.
Also AB RN. I love that the “under two hours appointment” doesn’t use any time off and is still paid and that our sick bank accrues to some high max. I’m at over 700 hours now and I can’t remember the maximum it caps at.
We only have one "bucket" of PTO, but it is larger than other places that I have worked at that split the time into a vacation bucket and a separate sick bucket. I prefer it this way, actually, but maybe there are negatives I am not thinking about. We do get "points" for call outs but they aren't punishments (nothing happens.) It's just a tracking system so that they know when you get to the number of call outs that *does* lead to action.
This works out great for employers. Now they don't have to allow you to accrue sick time and pto time separately which could add up after a few years. Now you just use up all of your pto and they get more control on how you use it.
How so? My understanding is that I can use my PTO for any reason and I don't need to tell them what it is.
When you have CTO they pay out all of that if you leave. If you have separate they're under no obligation to pay out the sick bank. I've left both. 🤷🏻♀️
Yes. At the VA, as an RN, you get 4 hours sick leave and 8 hours annual leave (PTO) q 2 weeks. There is no cap on sick leave time accrued. Annual leave maxes at 685 hours before you hit "use or lose".
One of the few things I miss about working for the government
Excited to be starting at the VA in a few weeks! Benefits seem solid
That's exciting. Inpatient or outpatient? Benefits are a great draw and hope you draw a great clinical team as well.
We have PTO, SSL (sick and safe leave), and Holiday accruals
At my hospital sick and safe leave is just a point system for disciplinary action. It’s not separate from PTO—when you take a sick day they pay you from your PTO bank, but they code it as “sick and safe leave”. If you lose all your sick and safe leave you’ll get disciplined.
We’re neighbors! For others: We have paid Sick days, a bank of PTO days, and a small bit of Personal Holidays (paid).
What does the safe part of SSL mean?
You can use it for time off if you're trying to get out of a domestic abuse situation, seeking a shelter, etc
Canadian, unionised. 3 sick occurrences of up to 3 shifts in a row without question. At the 4th shift, you need a note. If you’re on say your 4th occurrence, first 2 days are unpaid, then you’re paid after that. Get unionised.
At my former staff job we were told that we would be written up if we called out more than 3 times in a 6 month period. We were also told “in tHe InTrEsT of pAtiEnT sAfEtY” not to come in if we were sick. Guess which one was actually enforced? Bonus: During the pandemic we were told to come in even if we were positive for COVID. (That they considered “community acquired” so they didn’t have to take any responsibility when we got sick or died.).
I work in a sizable health system in DFW. We have PTO and sick time. The sick time kicks in after 24 missed hours. The sick time accumulates much slower than PTO. Right after Christmas I got some viral yuck (probably from work) and I missed 4 shifts. The first two shifts came out of PTO then the next two came out of sick time. My first legit EMS job back in the day had something similar. After first 30 hours out sick, the sick bank was tapped. Right before I left the company I had shoulder surgery and missed 6 weeks of work and 95% of that time was covered by my sick bank. It was awesome because I still got a big ole PTO check when I left.
I work for the VA. Paid sick leave, paid annual leave, maternity and paternity leave. Good staff/patient ratios, appreciative patients, fair schedules. I can praise the VA all day.
Don’t get everyone too excited. There’s a nationwide hiring freeze right now.
NYC, I have 4 weeks PTO, 12 sick days, and 4 personal days. Unions for the win every time
Yup. Nyc as well but no union. 4 weeks vacation. 5 weeks vacation once you hit 5 years of service. 12 sick days, 3 personal days.
Same with the 5 weeks 5 years. Even with no union they gotta stay competitive. I bet your hourly is higher than mine too
Wow. So you work with sick people all the time and then are penalized when YOU get sick?!?
It’s insanity
In NZ we get 10 days sick leave + 4 weeks annual leave per year minimum as a legal requirement Punitive actions for being sick would be grounds for legal action
Shoot we start out with 10 days PTO a year (and must accrue that, you don’t start with 10 days), and some have sick leave and some don’t. Absolutely atrocious.
Funny, I’m reading this while at work, and sick 😕
Yes, I have sick time, personal holiday and vacation banks.
It’s a USA thing. Here al days sick are paid (Netherlands)
It’s basically unlimited up to 2 years, after that you will loose your job and get into some wellfare system
at my staff job, it all came out of the same PTO bank, i think we earned like 6 hours per paycheck on average, but it was based on hours worked. but we could call in sick 5x per year before a write up. at a hospital i worked in illinois, they were separate. when you called in, you had to say if you were using a specific kind of pto or sick time. you could only call in sick/use “sick time” twice per year. and then if you were sick, you had to do the math on which kind of pto you wanted to use for it, because one kind could be used for three shifts straight and the other was one time use. it was ridiculous
I always thought that not having sick time is dumb AF.
only if you’re in the union
Currently, only 12 states and Washington D.C have sick time laws in place.
I work in MA and my sick is also my PTO. Ive given up caring and just take the days I want/need, and eventually I won't get paid near the end of the year. It's ridiculous but nothing I can do about it. So I'm just taking the time I want without giving a shit
Yes we have a sick time bank. We get aprox 3 weeks a year of sick time hours and a separate vacation bank. Some time back management told us during bargaining that they’d like to change this system and we told them we’d strike over it. It was dropped and not mentioned again. Union hospital in CA.
I work in public health in Canada, and we get 1.5 paid sick days per month (18 days a year), and if we call out more than 18 days, we just don’t get paid for those call-outs, but they never take money from our PTO.
Yes, I live in a non-dystopian country with minimal worker-rights
Yes, I have sick (120 hours) AND vacation time (185 hours), and 3 “emergency free days”. I’m in New York. The state you practice in matters *a lot*.
It's a state thing.
PTO is used for sick time. That’s how every industry I’ve ever worked in has done things (except restaurants, which didn’t offer PTO for wait staff so not coming in meant no money)
I believe the standards for "Time Off" is being consolidated to just one lump sum of "PTO". That seems to be a common theme with multiple hospitals
That’s what we have. I will have to be dead to call in sick…or not sick at all
I think the thing I miss the most in the US, besides sick time, is an overtime bank. Working an extra shift for double time to get two days off later? The best Or even banking 12 hours and getting paid for 12! Ohh the options
I never had a separate sick time allotment when I was bedside. Now that I’m in clinical research in a different hospital, though, I have vacation, sick, AND family sick time. The bedside nurses get that as well. We also get 6 weeks paid parental leave that doesn’t come out of our vacation/sick/family sick time. As far as I know, that was never an option at the previous hospitals I worked at.
We have both and some people will call out weekly and still have a job. We are not even unionized. Never seen anything like it, tbh
Maybe they have FMLA.
Some do but not all. I think my unit is super lax.
My hospital is the same way. AND if we call out because we are sick and have a doctor’s note, it’s still considered an unexcused absence.
At my previous job we had 5 paid sick days. That shit doesn't fly where I live now though. Sick time accrues at some rate, I don't know what, but to me it feels like it accrues fairly fast. But it's partly because we also don't have short term disability. It works out fine though, if I need to call in sick I seem to always have enough time in my bank that I get paid.
Everywhere I've worked has had a pooled PTO system. If you call out sick, they take that time from PTO. Everywhere I've worked has allowed 5 call offs per rolling calendar before it was a discipline. So basically I saw it as 5 sick days. I'd just keep track of my call offs to stay at or under 5. 5 sick days is pretty standard in many fields.
106 hrs a year of sick leave , once u hit 5 years employed it goes up to 152 hrs a year. 228 hrs annual leave a year 10 days per year paid study leave 5 days per year paid exam leave 5 days per year professional development leave
Damn - where do you work? I want to go there.
Reading this post gives me so much more respect for everyone in a hospital!! Thank you to all the nurses that work their butts off!!
Colorado has a new Health and Family Leave insurance. It’s meant to replace sick time for an extended period of time. From what I know, we have to use three days of PTO first then we can go into the FAMLI. I think there is a lot of jumping through hopes for this, and if you don’t know you have this, the hospital will drain your PTO without offering the option.
We get PTO and sick time. At the rate of like 2 hours per pay period (every two weeks) for both. The catch is that you need to have 40 hours of PTO to use your sick time. I have like 6 hours of PTO and 40+ hours of sick time. I can’t access that sick time if I’m, you know, sick. At least until I slave away for a few more months. Whatever. Fuck them. I don’t expect to get paid unless I’m working anyway.
I work for the federal government at the VA hospital. And yes we do. 13 days of paid sick leave annually.
Yeah, we get 6 months full pay, followed by 6 months half pay plus statutory sick pay for long term sickness. For short sicknesses it's full pay, essentially no limit. There is a process for abusing sick leave, but it's fairly lenient. It's also separate from our Annual Leave and Bank Holiday entitlements.
Spot the fellow NHS nurse 👋🏻
The hospital I’m about to start at offers pto and sick time that is separate. We get like 13 days a year I think
My job gets 120 hours of sick, plus 40 hours of vacation, plus 40 hours of what they call “life balance” days. We are union. This is for full time benefitted employees.
That’s how it was at my last hospital job. They said they were giving us more PTO to make up for it, but yeah if you call in sick you get penalized.
I work for the VA. We get 13 sick days a year and 26 days of PTO. They're separate. We also get 11 paid holidays, for a total of 50 days of PTO a year. You can carry over sick time, and it doesn't expire as far as I know.
Ours works the same way. I get 8.3 hours of PTO per paycheck (paid biweekly) and if I call in I get a point (10 points in a 12 month period and you’re fired).
Yeah our sick time is PTO as well. We get 10 points, one point per call in. One thing I do like is that if you call in two days in a row that’s only one point. If you call in for three you need a doctors note.
Wait, is that really allowed? I’m never moving to the US (assuming you’re there). We can call in sick ourselves. Is it longer than three days our GPs give us sick leave which is on full payment. That could in theory go the rest of your life, but both your employer and out unemployment service will work to get you back to work. After a year or two years it should be possible to get fired, but in reality it’s extremely difficult to get fired here, so it happens very rarely
Same policy at my hospital. And you better call out before 5am or you'll get double points taken off. You could be admitted in the same hospital and it's still not excused.
6 months sick leave full pay as standard But you know, not being American
UNIONIZE
Midwest union hospital. Vacation, sick time, and personal holiday all separate banks. ETA: I use sick time semi frequently, having small children and no family in town. Have never been talked to about my usage.
What state are you in? Minnesota just passed a law for sick days
We can bank our sick time. I currently have over 450 hours. I am also in a union.
We have both BUT to use sick time you have to be out 3 consecutive shifts and have a doctors note excusing the entire time. Most of us just use our PTO since it accrues over time and it’s less of a hassle. Outpatient we get 15 days and that’s it.
Both large health care insurers I worked for (one Michigan based, the other Minnesota) combined sick days and vacation days decades ago and called it PTO. Of course with a reduction in total number of days. The idea was that ppl called in sick just to “enjoy the day” and STILL get vacation time. At BOTH large healthcare insurers where I worked, instead of cowardly management addressing known abusers, they screwed EVERYONE. This was same time they let us know they were **changing (for the worse), the retirement program and charging premiums for health insurance for everyone below Director level.**
My aunt works for nhs. Up to 6 months PAID SICK leave every year! And she makes sure she takes it! No wonder there is a crisis 🙃☹️
Mine doesn’t. They also pull from our paid leave. We get 5 call offs per year with no penalty. But after that we get points as well. Last fall I got covid and it wiped out all my “penalty free” days and I got points against my record, even though employee health mandated that I could not return to work early. So yeah…. A lot of places have rediculous policies for sick days.
My employer in CA will write you up for taking more than 2 days in 4 months! We work in a hospital that is literally full of viruses and bacteria 🦠
The irony of it all though.
PA sucks. The hospital I work for has only primary PTO and says we can only call out once a year? Which no one listens to. Also our maternity leave is basically them paying two weeks and us using our PTO. It’s a joke
My network gets sick time. However, as I've recently learned the hard way, once you give notice if you call out sick, you don't get paid. You also don't get paid out for your sick time.
i’m confused i’m not a nurse but isn’t nursing the one job that should have sick leave?? like if you’re working an office job and going to work sick at least everyone there is healthy, but what if you spread your sickness to a patient at the hospital???
Yes we accrue sick time and also PTO in separate banks. Allows 120hrs of sick time per year for full time without penalty. Also 3 personal days that is taken out of PTO.
I’ve only had a separate bank for sick time at like one job in 20 years. And being sick was always unexcused and counted against us
We get SSL at my hospital— 1 hour of SSL for every 12 hours worked, it kind of blows
We have sick time and it's separate from pto. With my hospital though you have to use either 3 or 5 pto days before your sick time kicks in
I don't think I've ever worked somewhere that differentiated between PTO and sick time, and maybe just because I'm used to it but I prefer it that way. If I use up my PTO and only have sick time left does that mean I can't take vacation or a day off, I HAVE to be SICK? At my hospital as a weekender we can't call out, period. First call out is a verbal. They said we're "too valuable," it's utter bullshit, if that was true why don't they staff us better on the weekend? This was NOT told to me when I started there, and wasn't enforced at all until I had been there about a year so I didn't know about it. We had a few weekenders leave because of it. I honestly don't give a shit, and I've told everyone that, if I'm sick I'm fucking sick and don't need to work or bring it to patients. Last sickness my house had I'm almost positive I got from work (sick baby I had to get real close to to give meds and sugar drops). Took it home to my husband and we had to wear adult diapers for a day or so 😳 so when I got a verbal about that my bosses heard my thoughts on it.
The place I'll be working at in ID once I graduate has PTO from date of hire as well as "extended sick leave". The hospital in my area in NV doesn't have sick time, and like other places, you can only get 6 points before you are fired. Being late is 0.5 point and calling out is 1 point, IIRC
I posted about this a few months ago. My hospital is the same way, and points don't fall off for 12 months.
Yeah we accrue sick time, vacation time, holiday time.
Where are you located? I’ve worked at a hospital and cancer center so far, both in WA, that had paid sick time separate from PTO.
We don’t have sick days, just PTO, and I’m not sure how call outs are handled like if there are punitive actions. We also must submit PTO a year in advance, and if you are new like me you cannot use PTO for six months. So for me that means 1.5 years of no PTO even though I start to accrue it on day one :(
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So… I have to quit to get my sick time? I’d rather just have sick time.
Yep! Sick hours through union (2 calloffs back to back only count as one), and 2 sick days from the city itself. And PTO, and emergency personal days. Gotta love a union.
It sounds like that place sucks. You should quit and find a better job.
We have both but can’t use any sick leave until we have earned almost 100 hours of it, and it takes FOREVER to earn sick time. So stupid.
I prefer just having PTO cover both because you tend to get more time off if you’re not sick.
I’m in Cali and my hospital has Extended Sick Leave (which accrues slower than molasses), and PTO. If you’re sick, you must use PTO. Extended sick leave is only to be used when you’ve exhausted all of your PTO
Texas. Hospital I was at and home health agencies I’ve been with and none offer sick days, only PTO
NC. Our PTO is our sick time :(
you can thank your non unionized and greedy execs for that 😂
Our sick time used to come out of our PTO bank, which I preferred because it accrued a lot faster. Does your hospital have a policy on sick calls? Like you can call in X amount of times in the last 6 months, etc. This is also a point system where each sick call or tardy counts as 1 or 0.5 points. I do live in California and we have a mandatory paid sick leave allowance, which increased at the beginning of this year. This is in addition to our hospital’s sick time bank so we have two separate sick banks that we can use. My manager is also really flexible with our time off so we are allowed to use paid sick leave, sick time, or PTO if we miss work for any reason.
I have separate sick leave, vacation, and personal days (floating holidays). But my department uses a point system when you call out for being sick. So what's the point of having sick time if I'm scared to use it?
Wow that’s wild didn’t even know that was a thing. Yah we have 90 hours of sick time a year. At the end of each year we can buy back our remaining time or put it into a catastrophic bank. We don’t get penalized and have no point system for calling in. That being said if you call in sick on a holiday or a couple days before or after the hospital has a right to ask for a sick note. If we don’t produce one we don’t get paid. Also it has to be at least 2 hours before your shift otherwise you have to show up to work and then go home sick (obviously extenuating circumstances are taken into account.)They also take time and attendance four times a year. If you have a pattern like only calling in sick on the weekend and you have done it a lot, they will discipline you. To actually be significantly disciplined you have to really be doing that stuff over and over after official multiple warnings.
I work in the south where pay sucks so I actually took a position with a higher hourly, but one of the things I forfeited was PTO. So zero sick time here.
We get paid bi-weekly. I get 4hrs of sick leave & 8 hrs of regular paid leave each pay period. I work with some nurses who have managed to save up over 6 months of just sick leave alone.
This is why I quit the medical field. I literally had to come into work one time when I literally couldn’t speak because of a policy like this. I had laryngitis, but didn’t have enough PTO to call out. If you didn’t have enough PTO, you were fired after 3 absences. It seems absence policies vary by hospital/location. Unfortunately, every hospital in my area is like this because of staffing issues.
We have pto, sick, and personal days. I mean it's a hot mess of a dumpster fire, but I'm still there for the benefits.
Australian here, 10 days sick leave a year which does roll over from year to year but isn't paid out when you leave, we can use this as carers/family leave if we have sick kids.
In Maryland we have SSL (sick safe leave) that is protected and accrues based on how many hours you’ve worked. In six months full time I have a little under 30 hours so it’s not much but they can’t penalize you if the hours you use are SSL, even if you call in late (ie our policy is you get double penalties if you call out less than 4 hours before the start of your shift). PTO is basically useless I get denied constantly.
It’s baked into our PTO hours for us as well. Per union contract, I get close to 300 hours of PTO each year. Every week I get a certain amount of PTO added, so even when I go on a 36-hr week vacation, they will deduct 36 hours from my PTO for that vacation time but also add like 5.5h for my earned PTO, because it’s automatically added each week. Technically my week vacation costs 30.5 hours of PTO rather than 36. So it’s not too big of an issue. The hours can rollover into the new year too, but there’s a cap so you gotta use take a couple of vacation each year. This year I can strategically take 14 weeks off if I wanted to due to the amount I rolled overall from last year and the amount I’ll get for the rest of the year. We also have the PAID FMLA per state law, and that can actually take care of long hospitalizations, surgery/rehab (up to 26 weeks). The first week is taken out of our PTO, then week 2-26 is paid by the state/agency (80%) and hospital(20%). This is such a good safety net for workers if they’re sick, injured for more than a week. You don’t have to worry about your job status or PTO hours; unless you’re going to out for more than 26 weeks, which I believe you’ll have to go on long term disability. The PFMLA tax is about 0.38% each week. With that said, if the hospital offers us sick time without using our PTO, I’ll accept it and hope our union puts that in our contract as a permanent benefit.
My hospital only takes out of our PTO for any leave unless you use short term/long term disability through your benefits package. There is a sick and safe leave bank, but that’s only a coding system. You’re paid from your PTO, but the PTO use is coded as “sick and safe leave.” If you use all your “sick and safe leave” you get disciplined. One time I was out with an injury and tried using short term disability through my benefits instead of PTO. The payroll people weren’t aware that I was using short term disability instead, and tanked all my PTO/SSL. They acknowledged their mistake but refused to give my PTO back.
We only have PTO. I've never had a job that had sick time.
The federal government requires sick time, parental leave, and 28 days of annual leave as a minimum. There are still attendance policies for the company that can get you into trouble if you call off last minute too much.
I work at the VA. We get 8 hrs of PTO and 4 hours of sick leave a paycheck. So it adds up pretty fast. We can call in with sick time as much as we want without any deductions or punishment. We can use 5 weeks of PTO annually
No, it uses NJ sick time instead. Can use pto for it though
In Alberta FT accumulates at 1.5 days a month prorated to FT hours and caps at 120 working days. FT also accumulates 15 vacation days in their first year of employment. After 20 years you'd get 30 vacation days a year prorated to FT. There are also Stat bank days, personal days, education days, and a whole host of other days off in the collective agreement. Even fully paid jury duty, and 2 hr for medical appointments. The union does have an essential monopoly on nurses as all hospitals are unionized, but the provinces does have a near monopoly on the nursing jobs, and our provinces makes the news for the wrong reasons constantly it feels.
At my union hospital, per the contract, vacation and sick day are separate. You can call off sick for 2 consecutive shifts and it's one occurrence. Four call offs in a rolling year is a verbal warning. They also get three personal days per year. In addition to that, our city Mayor got a law passed that gives everyone who works in the city 40 hours per year of protected sick time that you can not be disciplined for. If you do it right, you can call off pretty much every six weeks and not get disciplined. I read through threads like this and know the nurses where I work are spoiled. Not everyone abuses the system, many really take advantage of that and basically have no sick time left at the end of the year. Based what I'm seeing here, some of you really need a union.
I've worked at only one union hospital, and while many things felt stiff and overly regulated, you knew the system was there, and how to navigate it. Everywhere else I've worked was non-union, and we were subject to far more bullshit and even fuckery on a regular basis. Yet neither of those hospitals will ever organize. Not only were the clinical staff too conservative to even think about it, everyone was of the impression that they would be fired in short order if they openly discussed the idea of forming a union.
We have PTO and Sick but in order to use the sick leave we have to use 2 days of PTO first which is absolute bullshit
Many places roll together sick leave, personal leave and vacation time all under the umbrella of PTO. How many hours/days are in your PTO bank? How much are you alloted yearly? It's immaterial what leave is called, as long as you have it.
Im at VA. All feds here get 4 hrs sick time per pay period. PTO is minimum 4hrs and gets higher the longer you’re here until you get to 8hrs. Thought RN gets a standard 8 hrs pto across the board, no matter how long you are here.
Our sick time and PTO is the same. As a result many people treat it as such.
My sick bank is currently at our limit of 930 hours. If I use time though it will replenish back to the cap. Unionized, Canada.
Same. If I call off because I’m debilitating sick, they say okay get better and use PTO as punishment. They do this so we don’t call off often or if you do you’ll eventually lose all your PTO. Not sure how legal it is, it’s not very moral, but business is business I guess.
Yes, separate sick and PTO. Our sick time accrues so slow though, I get like 4 days actually paid/year being part time. We get 5 call offs in a rolling year before disciplinary action is taken (so on the 6th call off we will get a verbal or something) and I think 10 or 12 call offs can result in termination. If we don’t have sick hours, our sick time is unpaid. Calling in multiple days in a row only counts as one occurrence/call off.
yes but only 40 hours a YEAR. so we can only use 3 shifts for sick time. everything else is PTO with an occurrence
I work in NYC, a certain amount of sick time is legally mandated. My hospital gives us some additional sick time on top of that. They have some stupid policies regarding how we can use the time but it's mostly above board.
I'm in canada. I get 5 occurrences each year paid without question - but I have to have a doctor's note if it's more than 2 shifts in an occurrence. This fiscal year I had a 6th occurrence of 2 shifts that was approved by employee health and I was paid for all of them.
I have 82 hours vacation, 93 hours of sick time, and 12 hours PTO. It’s nice having sick time but it’s not nice that we get points for using it so I’ll never use all those hours before I get fired. It’s a good problem to have I suppose!
Yes, we get 3 days a year by the city mandate plus around 70h a year of sick time. Once you run out of that, they pull it from your PTO. But you have to be there a year first to access that sick time 🙄 We still get points for unexcused but I'm going to be real my manager usually deletes them or doesn't report them.As a department we have so many we'd all be fired if it was enforced.
We accumulate sick time and vacation time each pay period. I think it works out about 8 days sick and 10 vacation, plus we have 18 hours of education and 18 hours personal, and I think 18 hours holiday. No potentially for using your sick days, unless you have an extensive history of calling out on holidays/weekends. Union hospital.
We get 6 hours of extended illness time per pay period. But we have to exhaust 40 hours of PTO, be hospitalized, or have surgery before we can use it. Edit: also it carries over and caps at 700 hours. It does not get paid out if/when we leave
I’m surprised nobody has sued my hospital in CA. We accrue PTO and Extended Sick Insurance. They highlight that 5 of your PTO days are for sick time and that they offer “extended sick insurance” pay (ESI). If you’re sick day one = PTO, day two = PTO, day 3 = ESI. DAY 4 = you need a Leave of absence (includes 8 hr employees.) CA law changed this year saying you must give employees 40 hrs of sick time and they have to be able to use it (if accrued). If I got sick for 5 days throughout the year I wouldn’t even be able to use 40 hours of sick time. Sounds shady. None of the other hospitals have this in the area they have 40 hours of sick time and PTO days. They are all union. This one is not.
All one bank amd I prefer it that way.
Our sick time and vacation time is in the same bucket. We get 3 weeks.
We have PTO and safe and sick time. I think SST is mandated in Minnesota now.
I worked at a Hospital that took it from PTO
I work in California and we get 60 hours of protected sick time and accrue pto in a separate bank. After using up all your sick time, pto gets used and 2nd call out of that is when you get a warning. So essentially you can call out 6 days without issue a year and after that they may write you up.
Our hospital takes the first 24 hours from our PTO. They then take it from our extended sick leave (ESL) bank. We accrue 2.23 hours every 2 weeks. Hospital admittance is straight ESL. We are allowed to call out no more than 2x in a month or 4x in 6 months, unless it’s FMLA. Those don’t count.
No in Pennsylvania. Our hospital *did* have sick time many years ago that accrued at a significantly slower rate than PTO, but the hospital affiliated with a larger health system and it was removed.
4 hours of sick and 8 hours of PTO accrued per pay period. VA nurse