How to plan on-call duty in a veterinary practice

Step 1: enter the rota as it comes

Veterinarians in private practice are obliged under the professional codes of the state veterinary chambers to take part in on-call duty, unless it is covered voluntarily. The specific times differ by chamber district.

Enter the rota as a recurring shift as soon as it is settled. For part-time work the obligation is pro rata to the regular weekly hours, which many professional codes set out as a scale.

Step 2: keep on-call duty and stand-by duty apart

The distinction is not a formality. Anyone who has to stay at a place determined by the employer is performing stand-by duty, and that counts as working time in full. Anyone who only has to be reachable and can choose where to be is performing on-call duty.

Record both as types of their own, not as ordinary working time. Otherwise neither the maximum working time nor the basis for pay is right.

• Stand-by duty counts towards working time in full.
• For on-call duty, the actual call-outs count.
• Both are reported separately, so that the evaluation answers both questions.

Step 3: check the rest period before the following day

Eleven uninterrupted hours of rest lie between two working days under section 5 ArbZG. An on-call duty ending at two in the morning shifts the possible start on the following day to one in the afternoon.

This is exactly where the most common planning error arises, because the duty is in one list and the consultation in another. If both sit in the same plan, the conflict check reports the contradiction before the plan is published.

Step 4: settle cover in advance

On application, the chamber can exempt somebody from taking part for serious reasons, for instance particularly demanding family obligations. Independently of that, every rota needs a cover rule for cases of illness.

In MetronHR the open shift goes out as a request to the pool of people allowed to take the duty on, rather than to the practice manager.

Step 5: report premium hours separately

On-call duties fall at night, on Sundays and on public holidays. For the premiums to be quantifiable at all, the hours in those positions have to be reported separately.

MetronHR determines them and presents them per person in the monthly Excel overview. Calculating the premium amounts themselves is part of payroll and stays with the tax adviser.