Nhs bank vs overtime

What is the difference between bank shifts and doing overtime in the NHS? Is there a big difference in pay?

Ask your HR department. Bank is what you're contracted to work and overtime is anything extra that you worked of your own volition. OVertime pay is usually decided and agreed in your contract when you start work. I guess it depends on the job.

Reply 2

Emily_B

15

Bank is a 0 hours contract. You work the shifts you want to/can do, on the wards/departments you want to/those that have uncovered shifts. You get paid the hourly rate for that shift (e.g. if you're a band 5 covering a band 5 shift, you get paid bottom rate band 5 per hour to cover that shift).
People work on bank either as their primary contract or as additional to their substantive contract.
Overtime is agreed shifts on top of your contracted hours (for your own department). Generally gets paid time + 1/3.
So for your own ward, when covering an otherwise unfilled duty on top of your contracted hours, you can do it as a bank shift or ask for overtime. If that shift is on another ward/department, you can't get overtime as you're not contracted to work there.
Sometimes you'll get places offering bonuses on top of pay for doing bank shifts. E.g. over the winter, my place offers a £50 bonus for a bank half shift and £100 bonus for bank full shift, which then ends up paying more than doing overtime would...

Reply 3

JaceW98

10

Original post by Emily_B

Bank is a 0 hours contract. You work the shifts you want to/can do, on the wards/departments you want to/those that have uncovered shifts. You get paid the hourly rate for that shift (e.g. if you're a band 5 covering a band 5 shift, you get paid bottom rate band 5 per hour to cover that shift).
People work on bank either as their primary contract or as additional to their substantive contract.
Overtime is agreed shifts on top of your contracted hours (for your own department). Generally gets paid time + 1/3.
So for your own ward, when covering an otherwise unfilled duty on top of your contracted hours, you can do it as a bank shift or ask for overtime. If that shift is on another ward/department, you can't get overtime as you're not contracted to work there.
Sometimes you'll get places offering bonuses on top of pay for doing bank shifts. E.g. over the winter, my place offers a £50 bonus for a bank half shift and £100 bonus for bank full shift, which then ends up paying more than doing overtime would...

This is a good explanation - just popping in to add as well that overtime is generally limited to a certain number of hours, either stated in your contract or a manager/department's policy, as they want to avoid falling foul of working time regulations etc - my ward limits us to 20hrs overtime per week unless there's some exceptional circumstance. Bank work is not, as it's a completely separate job, so if you have a bank contract as well as your standard one you could be working full-time hours in both, just like if you had a second job outside of healthcare.

@RabbitDragon if you're considering which to do I'd recommend bank, that's what I do - it's more fun and better for building experience because you work in different wards/with different people to who you usually would, and you have more flexibility (there's always a ton of bank work available, there's no limit on hours and you don't tend to fall into being expected/pressured to work certain shifts as sometimes happens with overtime). The pay is comparable in my experience - overtime gets additional pay, but bank salaries are higher in the first place because of the zero-hours contract

Nhs bank vs overtime

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