"I'll fight through the gates of hell and back for my nurses"*
*Except to advocate that our cheap ass private equity owned facility hire actual full time staff with benefits instead of outsourcing to a temp agency.
Those agency nurses aren't your enemy. They aren't the reason you end up taking an assignment. That's the fault of the corporation that owns you. And in all sincerity, good for those agency nurses demanding the working conditions that they want and refusing to accept whatever the facility wants to push on them.
Sincerely, a hospital nurse having our union election on Jan 10
(And I have stories too, you know. Like my supervisor who tonight simply lied to the overnight sup about our staffing situation and tried to leave two nurses alone to care for NINE patients on our critical care stepdown unit overnight.)
The nursing shortage is at least partially artificial. There is a shortage of nurses who are willing to work in abusive conditions that exploit our legal, moral, and professional obligations to our patients to make their profit. Fight these corporations for safe working conditions and watch how many nurses return to the bedside.
Your hypothetical does not accurately reflect anything about how the healthcare system works.
No transplant surgeon is getting a surprise shift. This is exactly why on-call shifts exist. There is already someone available who knows they need to be ready to go at a moment's notice.
And nurses don't function the same as doctors. We are regular wage employees, just like anyone working retail. We absolutely do not have to be available whenever and wherever. They can (and do, constantly) ask us to pick up shifts. But we're not obligated to come in on our scheduled days off.
Healthcare corporations need to get their fucking staffing models together.