A Brief Note On Nurses And Nurses ' Rights And Lobbies On Healthcare Related Matters

When nurses experience fatigue due to excessive overtime, effects that can occur are reduced decision making ability, reduced communication skills, increased forgetfulness, increased tendency of risk taking, reduced ability to handle stress on the job, decreased ability to do complex planning, and inability to recall details which can all danger patients wellbeing. Unfortunately even with all the

Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning

Patients in a hospital and/or healthcare facilities have to be cared for all day and all night, everyday of the week by nurses. The usual way to fulfill this need is to divide up the day into three 8-hour shifts. Different shifts have been put into place to help improve nurse satisfaction, decrease the nursing shortage and save the hospital money. The 24-hour day is made up of two 12-hour shifts; 12 hours in the day and 12 hours at night. There has been quite an ongoing debate over the years regarding this issue of nurses working over 8 hours in a single day. Many people, such as hospital nursing administrators, have reason to believe that working long hour shifts causes more errors in

A nurse’s typical day isn’t without stress; it is usually a lot of complex planning, critical thinking, time management, an abundance of communications with all departments of the hospital, and documenting events that have happened throughout the day on their entire patient assignment. “Nurses who are mandated following the completion of their regular shift are often ill-equipped to continue working. They have not planned for that situation with: proper advanced rest, arrangements for

Today the big debate in nursing career is weather nurses working at hospitals in the United States should be working 8 or 12-hour long shifts. The reason this debate is still ongoing is because they are finding advantages to both of these shifts. Researchers are finding nurses who are working 12-hour shifts to be more fatigued. Whereas, when a nurse works 8-hours they are more involved and energetic through their shift. Even though 12 hour shifts in a way can be beneficial to the nurses they also need to think about the patient stratification. Studies have shown that nurses who work 8-hour shifts provide better patient satisfaction. If all hospitals across the United States mandated 12-hour shifts nurses will be more prepared and focused

“Nursing shortage has become one of the most pressing concerns for hospitals nationwide” (Rosenstein, 2002, p.26) and a common impractical solution to avert poor patient care is “ working overtime or exceeding the 40h” (Kunavikikul, 2015, p.391). Nurses who worked continuous 12hours shifts or exceeded 40hours of work a week developed extreme mental and physical exhaustion and it “ was found that performance of fatigued nurses deteriorates” (Kunavikikul et al., 2015, p.388), increasing their vulnerability for making errors. In Mrs. N’s case, the night nurse along with the majority of nurses working on that acute medical floor, all worked 12hour shifts toppled off with overtime that exceeded the 40hour weekly mark. Consequently, these nurses

Since majority of nurses prefer 12-hour shifts it is very unlikely that they will return to 8-hour shifts. Excessive over time still remains an issue, so therefore there are strategies that are being made to protect both nurses and patients safety. These strategies include making sure that nurses working 12-hour shifts, get mandatory breaks and leave work on time and that napping is available for night shift workers.

This paper explores the pros and cons of nurses working long shifts in regards to the nurses and patients alike. Some of the positives for the nurses include: having more days off per week, a more flexible schedule, and fewer commutes to work. In regards to the patient, there are fewer patient handoffs, which is thought to allow for better continuity of care. Some of the negative aspects of nurses working long shifts include: feeling burnt out, intending to leave their job, increased chance of making errors, impaired driving ability, health-related issues, and potential breakdowns. In regards to the negative aspects for patients, patient satisfaction suffers as the length of the shift the nurse is working increases. Furthermore, patients of nurses working long shifts also give the hospital a poorer rating overall, stating that they generally would not recommend it to family and friends. While there is no clear solution to this dilemma, it is certainly an issue that should be addressed by nurse leaders as the safety of nurses and patients is of paramount importance.

When nurse is rushing to meet the loads of a busy schedule or duty call, cutting back on sleep or working fatigued. Giving up seven to nine hours of rest, naps and not getting adequate amount of sleep after long shift hours in fact is realistic personal trade-off that over the long-term creates havoc in health. The truth is that working overtime, frequent interrupted rest brake or sleep deprivation is not a good idea for nurses. It not only affects nurse mentality and physical health, productivity, vitality, and sharpness or right decision taken, but also could change collective manners toward work and undesirable risk to patient’s safety. After review The American Nurse Association (ANA) (2014) position that promote stronger support and collaboration to reduce fatigue or sleep deprivation in nurses and continue afford safe patient care every day.

When nurses work for long hours with no rest, they are prone to fatigue thus leading to poor performance and an increase in errors. These effects are risky to the patients, nurses, and the health care centers. According to research, heavy workload on nurses

However, other studies have found that nurses’ healthiness is not undesirably affected by the 12 h shift (Dwyer et al., 2007; Jennings and Rademaker, 1987; Kaliterna and Prizmic, 1998), and some have established that it can essentially have affirmative well-being benefits, comprising a substantial reduction in individual symptomatology in the areas of overall health, cardiovascular associated illnesses, anxiety and frustration (Eaton and Gottselig, 1980), reduced emotional exhaustion (Stone et al., 2006; van Servellen and Leake, 1994) and consumption more healthily (Freer and Murphy-Black, 1995). One study found that nurses employed 12 h shifts involvement suggestively less compassion tiredness than those working for 8 h (Yoder, 2010). A smaller quantity of studies have reconnoitered the connection among work hours and the probability of incident or injury to nurses but these too have self-contradictory results. One study found that the danger of ‘drowsy driving’ doubled over and the risk of actuality involved in a motor vehicle crash or near motor vehicle crash nearly doubled when driving followed shifts exceeding 12 and a half hours in period (Scott et al., 2007). However, additional study found no changes stated in trouble driving home pre and post carrying out of 12 h shifts (Mills et al., 1983). Trinkoff et al. (2006a) found that employed 13 h or lengthier was considerably related with prevalence of neck, shoulder and back injury/complaint, even though Lipscomb et al.

For the month of July, the American Nurse Association is emphasizing on sleep hygiene for safety reasons. Addition to their intense 12 hour shifts; some nurses are sacrificing their breaks and lunchtime to finish charting if they want to end their shift on time. We often neglect nurses’ health, which can ultimately cause undesirable outcomes for both patient and nurses in the long run. Delivering the best care for the patients is a constant goal for nurses, yet they struggle to find the time to balance healthy schedules. Eventually exhaustion will occur causing nurses to be fatigue and unable to carry out their duty at their optimum level.

We all have those experiences in the Emergency Room where we spend many hours waiting for assistance in health related issues. The pain of waiting for care only makes the pain more unbearable. Nurses also require their own wellbeing in order to provide the correct diagnosis for their patients. With nurses working overtime, they may be unqualified to provide care due to a shortage of sleep, rest, and personal care. However, hospitals are very unpredictable, so this area of caution sometimes may be unavoidable. “We need much better staffing ratios. It’s really that simple” (Lampert, 2016). The staffing of nurses should be closely and carefully monitored due to the amount of people who are injured that require medical care.

A huge problem today is the mandatory overtime for nurses and how these long hours may affect their work and safety of their patients. Although there were times when the climate, staffing and the overtime did help with some patients, it didn’t help with all of them. There is belief that over the next several years there will be a nursing shortage from 218,000 in 2005 to about 1 million by 2020 and this will also happen around the same time that the baby-boom generation will begin to retire, causing many complications in the healthcare industry. The overall outcome people want for everyone is patient safety. Researchers soon figured out that the errors in a nurses work had to do with overtime and them being fatigue when working because they were not getting proper food habits and resting habits. Once they found out that the staff errors linked with patient problems they limited hours on nurses, but still had it so they weren’t understaffed (Sharp & Clancy 2008).

The authors speak about how the risk of nursing errors can endanger the safety of patient. In addition, heavy workloads and working frequent overtime is attributed to poor sleep quality and results in mental and physical fatigue as well. The article explains that the increased workload is a result of hospitals cutting cost and reducing the nursing workforce, which in turn severely affect the quality of patient care provided from nurses. The research conducted was a study with the criteria of shift work and how it affects nurses. There target population included three shifts rotations of nurses employed at four regional hospitals over a three month period. They observed that 82.33% of nurses doing shift work had poor sleep quality. Results were also reviled that reduced sleep quality among nurses led to fatigue. To improve the quality of patient care, manages must ensure a healthier work shift schedule to increase personal health status and clinical performance of nurses. They determined that the quality of patient care directly associated with the psychological and physical status of