Resources · Holiday coverage

What to do when the same nurse always gets holiday call

By Antonimar Mello, BSN, RN, a working perioperative nurse on Long Island and the founder of OnCallRank. Published July 6, 2026. Updated September 1, 2026.

If the same nurse keeps landing holiday call, the cause is almost always missing memory, not malice: nobody kept a reliable record of who covered each holiday in past years, so each holiday gets decided fresh. The fix is a year-over-year holiday log, a ranking that everyone can see, and an assignment made in the open weeks before the date.

Why does holiday call keep landing on the same nurse?

Holiday assignments repeat because the unit's memory of last year is informal, and informal memory favors whoever speaks up first. Three quiet mechanisms do the damage: nobody kept a reliable record of who covered each holiday, one dependable volunteer keeps saying yes, and the decision gets made the week of the holiday, when whoever already booked travel is untouchable.

Taken one at a time:

• Recency amnesia. By the time Labor Day comes around, who worked it last year is a matter of recollection. The nurse who remembers accurately is usually the one who worked it, and being right does not always win the argument.
• The reliable volunteer. Someone says yes every year, out of guilt or habit. The unit reads it as solved. Two years later that nurse is burned out and resentful, and the manager never technically assigned anything unfairly.
• Deciding late. When the assignment happens the week of the holiday, whoever has travel booked is untouchable and whoever stayed flexible pays for it. Deciding late punishes the accommodating.

The bill for that pattern lands on the person absorbing it. In a survey of 873 nursing staff published in Occupational Medicine, less choice over shift length was associated with higher burnout (odds ratio 0.20, 95% confidence interval 0.06 to 0.54), alongside reports of inadequate staffing. Holiday call is the sharpest version of a shift nobody chose.

What record does holiday call actually need?

A holiday log only works if it survives from one year to the next. Four columns carry it: the holiday, the year, who covered it, and whether they volunteered or were assigned. Most units keep some version of a call calendar, but it resets annually with the schedule template, and the holiday history resets right along with it.

The log you need is small. One line per holiday per year covers it:

The "volunteered or assigned" column matters more than it looks. A nurse who volunteered last year has a claim to be left alone this year. A nurse who was assigned last year has a stronger one. Without the column, both read as "worked it," and the distinction that staff actually care about disappears.

Rank in the open, weeks ahead

Publish who is up for each holiday weeks before the date, ranked off the record rather than off memory. A workable default: anyone who covered this holiday last year drops to the bottom, volunteers who want it move to the top, and everyone in between sits in the unit's normal seniority order. Published and consistent beats clever.

The exact recipe matters less than the fact that it is posted and applied the same way every year. When the list is visible weeks out, two good things happen. Staff who mind can object while there is still time to adjust, and staff who do not mind can trade or volunteer on their own terms instead of being cornered by a late ask.

Who protects the nurse who always volunteers?

The record does. Fairness cuts both ways: the nurse who always says yes needs the log as much as the nurse who feels dodged, because a written year-over-year history is what lets a manager say "not you this year" with a reason attached instead of a hunch. Volunteering quietly turns into load-bearing, and nobody notices until that nurse is finished.

Managers usually frame holiday fairness as protecting people from being over-assigned. The mirror problem is quieter: the person who keeps volunteering becomes load-bearing, and the unit stops noticing it is leaning on them. A visible year-over-year record turns "she always takes it" from a habit into a fact on a page, and facts on a page get corrected.

The stakes are not subtle. NCSBN's 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study, drawn from a survey of 800,000 nurses across 53 jurisdictions, found that 39.9% of RNs intend to leave the workforce or retire within five years, with roughly 41.5% naming stress and burnout as the root cause. A 2025 study in the Western Journal of Nursing Research reported that scheduling problems compromised nurses' health, caused work-family conflict, and influenced turnover intentions. Holidays are where work and family collide hardest, which makes them worth getting right on paper.

Where does software fit?

A tool helps when it keeps the multi-year record without anyone maintaining it and shows the ranking to the whole unit, so the holiday decision becomes a review instead of a negotiation. The manager stops arbitrating recollections. The list already says who covered Labor Day last year and who is up now.

OnCallRank handles holiday coverage exactly this way, because its founder is a working perioperative RN who lived this exact problem from the staff side: the holiday panel ranks the unit's nurses with their seniority position and a flag for who covered the same holiday the previous year, volunteers are visible, and the final assignment notifies every affected person and lands in the permanent history. Nothing about it touches patient data, so a unit can try it without an IT project. The trial is free for three weeks, no card: start your free trial, or book a 15-minute call.