Theatre Nurse On-Call: What It Involves and How It Is Paid

Oct 9

5 min read

Theatre nurse on-call is one of the least explained parts of a perioperative role, and it can shape your week more than almost anything else on the position description.

Of the 27 live perioperative roles we were recruiting for in early October, 22 do not mention on-call at all. Four say plainly that there is none. One says the enterprise agreement includes an on-call allowance.

So if you are weighing up a role, there is a good chance you will need to ask. This Theatre Careers Bulletin covers what on-call usually involves, how the Nurses Award 2020 pays it, and the questions that give you the full picture. It is general information, not industrial or legal advice, and your own agreement always has the final word.

What being on-call actually means

Under the Nurses Award 2020, an on-call allowance is paid to a nurse who is required by the employer to be on-call at their private residence, or at another mutually agreed place.

In theatre, that usually means being available to come back in for an emergency case after the elective list has finished, overnight, or across a weekend.

An emergency case still needs a full team. Depending on the hospital, that can mean scrub scout nurses, an anaesthetic nurse and recovery cover, so on-call is rarely limited to one role.

Most hospitals also set their own expectations about how quickly you need to arrive and how far from the hospital you can be. Those details sit in local policy rather than the award, so they are worth asking about directly.

Which roles tend to carry on-call

On-call follows the caseload. Hospitals that take emergency or after-hours surgery need a team ready to run it. Units that only run planned lists usually do not.

That pattern shows up in the roles we are recruiting for. The four adverts that state there is no on-call are all weekday or day surgery roles. Four other roles, in a larger theatre complex, ask for the full theatre roster, including weekends and all shifts.

We compared the two settings in more detail in day surgery nurse or main theatre, including how the roster differs between them.

How on-call is paid under the Nurses Award 2020

Many private hospital theatre nurses are employed under an enterprise agreement rather than the award, and agreements set their own terms. The award is still a useful baseline, because it shows the parts of on-call that are usually paid for.

The on-call allowance. A fixed dollar amount for each 24-hour period on-call, set at three levels: Monday to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, public holiday or non-rostered day (clause 17.2). The current figures are in the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide for the award.
Recall to the workplace. If you are on-call and recalled to work at the hospital, you are paid for a minimum of 3 hours at the appropriate overtime rate (clause 19.6(a)).
Recall by phone or electronically. If you are on-call and asked to deal with something by phone or online, you are paid for a minimum of 1 hour at the overtime rate. Several requests within the same hour count as one hour, and time beyond the first hour is rounded to the nearest 15 minutes (clause 19.6(b)).
Rest after overtime. The award provides for 10 consecutive hours off duty between the work of successive days (clause 19.4). A nurse who has not had that break is released until they have, without loss of pay, and if they are required to keep working without it, they are paid at 200% of the minimum hourly rate until released.

A worked example

Here is an illustrative example, not a specific hospital. Say you are on-call on a Tuesday night, rostered to start at 7am on Wednesday.

You are called in at 11pm for an emergency case and finish at 1am. You worked 2 hours, but under the award recall clause you are paid for a minimum of 3 hours at the overtime rate.

Your 7am start is only 6 hours after you finished. Under the award's rest period clause, you would be released until you had 10 consecutive hours off, so a 1am finish plus 10 hours means an 11am start, without loss of pay for the ordinary hours you miss.

Your agreement may handle this differently. The point is that the minimum payment and the rest break are part of what on-call is worth, not just the allowance.

What the advert usually leaves out

When I talk a role through with a theatre nurse, these are the on-call questions that usually settle it:

How often would you be rostered on-call in a typical month, and does that include weekends
What response time and travel distance does the hospital expect
How is the allowance paid, and what is the minimum payment if you are recalled
How is your next shift handled after a late recall
Is on-call shared across the whole team, including part-time staff
Is there a separate on-call roster for anaesthetics and recovery

These sit alongside the questions we cover in how to read a job offer properly. If you are comparing two roles with different pay formats, our guide to theatre nurse hourly rate or annual salary shows how to put them on the same footing first.

What on-call is like day to day

On-call changes an evening even when the phone never rings. You plan around being reachable and ready to travel, and that is worth weighing honestly against your life outside work.

It also brings something back. Emergency cases build experience that planned lists alone do not, and the allowance and recall payments add to your income.

For anaesthetic nurses in particular, after-hours work is often where confidence with unplanned cases grows. Our article on the anaesthetic nurse role covers what that role involves more broadly.

Where this leaves you

On-call is not a reason to rule a role in or out on its own. Some nurses want the experience and the extra pay. Others are at a stage where a weekday roster with no call matters more.

Both are reasonable. What matters is knowing which one you are signing up for before you accept.

You can see which live roles carry on-call and which do not on our theatre nursing jobs in Australia page, and we can talk you through the detail of any of them.