Floating

I understand that nurses may need to float and I have no issue helping in other areas when I can do so safely. What I’m struggling with is being repeatedly sent into clinical areas where I have not been trained or oriented and then expected to accept the assignment because I’m an RN. 

I’ve been floated to the emergency department (ED) multiple times despite not being an ED nurse and not having ED-specific training or orientation. I’ve also been sent to an acute medicine area and expected to cover patients experiencing acute psychiatric illness and psychosis despite having no mental health nursing training or orientation to that type of care. 

What makes this even more frustrating is the inconsistency in how competency concerns appear to be treated. I’ve seen an ED nurse decline a float to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) because the assignment involved covering a nurse caring for a patient with a tracheostomy. That concern was respected. Yet I’m expected to go into areas outside of my specialty and care for patient populations for which I have no specialty training. 

I don’t understand how competency can be a valid concern for one nurse but seems to carry so little weight when I raise the same issue. 

During one ED float, I was there to provide break relief for ED staff and was then denied my own break by the staff member I was relieving. I was expected to provide relief for someone else while not being given the same consideration myself. 

There have also been staffing decisions that I have struggled to understand. On one occasion, I was scheduled for my regular PICU shift. At approximately 3 p.m., my charge nurse told me that I was going to be floated. An overtime nurse was then brought in to work in PICU while I was sent elsewhere. I understand that hospitals have operational needs and can use overtime. What I don’t understand is why a regularly scheduled nurse would be removed from her own unit and replaced by an overtime nurse when the need for a float was already known. 

What makes these decisions particularly difficult for me is that the site administrator making many of them has a nursing background. They understand nursing competency. They understand why different specialties require different knowledge, skills, judgment and orientation. They understand that nurses are professionally accountable for the care we provide. 

That’s why it’s so difficult to reconcile some of these decisions with the professional expectations placed on nurses. 

I understand that hospitals have budgets and staffing pressures and that operational realities matter. But when the person making a staffing decision also has a nursing background, I expect nursing judgment to remain part of that decision. Filling a staffing hole can’t make specialty knowledge, competency and patient safety irrelevant. 

An RN is not automatically interchangeable with every other RN in every clinical environment. A PICU nurse is not automatically an ED nurse or a mental health nurse simply because we all have RN after our names. We have transferable skills, but specialty knowledge and orientation exist for a reason. 

At the same time, I have experienced other workplace decisions that have left me questioning whether policies and discretion are being applied consistently. 

I asked to change from full-time to casual/optional status and was denied. The reason I was given was that people in casual positions weren’t picking up shifts. Since my request was denied, at least five other nurses have been granted that same casual/optional status. This is particularly difficult to understand because I have picked up a significant amount of overtime and additional shifts myself this year. 

I’m not saying management can’t have criteria for approving casual status. I simply want to understand how a rationale based on people not picking up shifts resulted in my request being denied while multiple other nurses were subsequently approved. 

I’ve also recently discovered a significant discrepancy in my employment hours. In November 2025, my employment record showed more than 4,700 accumulated hours. It now shows barely more than 3,000. More than 1,700 hours appear to be missing from the number being reported. 

Those hours matter to me beyond seniority or payroll. I’m completing graduate nursing education and need to be able to verify my nursing and clinical experience for school and future NP requirements. I worked those hours. They represent nights, weekends, holidays, overtime and time away from my family. I need an accurate record of them. 

I have brought these concerns to my union and have asked that they be reviewed. I’m waiting to see what comes from that process. 

The reason I’m submitting to F-Word is because I think the issue is bigger than my individual situation. 

Nurses are told that our licence is our responsibility. We’re told to recognize the limits of our knowledge, skill and judgment. We’re told to advocate for safe care and speak up when an assignment is outside our competency. 

But what happens when we actually do? 

There is a very uncomfortable contradiction in telling nurses that they’re personally accountable for accepting only care they can safely provide while creating a workplace environment where questioning a float or assignment can feel like it’s not an option. 

I’m willing to float. I’m willing to help. I’m willing to work overtime, and have done so repeatedly. What I’m not willing to accept is the idea that being an RN means specialty competency no longer matters the moment there is a staffing problem somewhere else in the hospital. 

I also think nurses deserve consistency. If one nurse’s competency concern is enough to change or decline an assignment, another nurse raising a legitimate competency concern should be taken just as seriously. 

I’d like to know how many other ONA members have experienced this. How many nurses have been sent into specialties they weren’t trained for and felt they couldn’t say no? How many have been told they’re accountable for their practice but then felt that their professional judgment was disregarded when staffing needs took priority?