National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Jerry Johnson is the site manager at a Department of Transportation (DOT) customer service office, where nine other employees also work. Mary Marshall, a former employee at that particular office of the DOT has reported to our office, the OIG of the DOT, that Jerry Johnson has been devoting his attention to his own personal things, such as engaging in “church work” and “political work” while on government time from the DOT.

Paramedics are emergency medical technicians more commonly known as EMT’s. EMT’s provide emergency treatment for the ill or injured on a scene and during en route to a medical facility. EMT’s are called upon at all hours of the day or night; typically the first medical specialist that a patient will call upon in an emergency. Paramedics are trained to provide lifesaving pre-hospital care in emergency situations. The range of medical services varies according to the level of training and/or certification.

A union spokesman said Monday that EMTs generally consider their jobs to be a 24-hour kind of thing.

Becoming and EMT or paramedic is a very stressful and demanding career. It is also a depressing job dealing with sick people every day. However, the job is extremely rewarding and gratifying to know that you helped assist in saving a person’s

It is problematic that healthcare professions work rotating shifts because this impedes on the ability of the human body to function properly. Rotating shifts means that everyday their shifts are at different times and different lengths of time. The human body needs to be in line with the environment and when the sun is up the body naturally is awake and alert and during night time the body goes dormant to sleep, this is called circadian rhythm. The body has a circadian clock and when this is disrupted this can lead to depression and anxiety. This can lead to exhaustion and irritation that can cause someone to make mistakes. This can also lead to sleep debt and cause insomnia that can affect the mental alertness. Sleep allows the body to fight

Alarm fatigue in health care has grown to be an ever-growing concern in the health care arena, especially when looking at patient safety concerns. There must be an understanding of the problem before we can develop policies and effective strategies to counter this problem. The concept of alarm fatigue in health care will be evaluated utilizing the method developed by Walker and Avant (2010) that identifies and gives the significance of the attributes, antecedents, and end-consequences of alarm fatigue in health care. This will be developed based

For some nurses, mandatory overtime can be an advantage due to financial instability but mostly mandatory overtime can cause fatigue, burnout, injuries, errors, inadequate sleep and deficits in performance. According to research working long hours which consists more than 40 hours a week or over 12 hours a day leads to an increased medication errors and patient mortality. The probability of making medication errors increases tremendously when nurses work longer than 12.5 hours a day. During surveys regarding reasons of overtime, 60 % of nurses stated that overtime was obligatory as part of their job, 29 % of nurses stated that they volunteered and 41% of nurses stated that they were “on call hours” (Bae, 2012)

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

The Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988, a law that prohibits the import of a daily driver vehicle that is less than 25 years old. Has become an ongoing issue in today’s driving society. Specifically, the law states an imported car less than the manufacturing date of 25 years need to pass certain safety emissions and tests to be brought to U.S.A. “The vehicle must be capable of being brought into compliance with all applicable Federal motor vehicle safety standards.” (102 STAT. 2819). From 1988 to, the present consumers are arguing that this pointless law is taking away their freedom to buy and import vehicles at their own discretion. This could lead the consumers into black market schemes making it a very risky approach towards imported vehicles sales and would hurt the economy in the same process. The Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988 should be removed because of the freedom it strips away from the automotive consumer.

The EMT profession is one of the few professions left in America that have unregulated work shift hours. Twenty-four hour work shifts are common among the EMT industry and the resulting fatigue is causing mental and physical health issues with EMT’s as well as safety issues for both EMT’s and the patients they are responding to. I believe that the EMT profession needs work hour regulation similar to those of long haul truck drivers, medical residents, pilots and railroad conductors. ”Virtually every branch of commercial or public transportation has very strict rules on hours that their employees can operate, except EMT.”(Medic Madness) The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) plans to announce a research team in the coming years, which will develop fatigue management programs for the EMT industry. These programs will educate EMTs on proper fatigue management as well as teach them the negative effects fatigue has on the body and mind. In my opinion, the regulation of work hours and the development of fatigue management programs in the EMT profession is long overdue.

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

Working overtime despite the lack of rest is associated with an increase in work-related injuries and needle sticks (de Castro et al 2007). These nurses not only obtain an injury but often do not seek medical attention thereafter or even fill an incident report. Nurses have a

Limited attention has been paid to the hours worked by nurses, or the effects of these hours on patient safety (Rogers, 2008). Even though most nurses favor 12- hour shifts and overtime, it is associated with difficulties staying awake during times of duty, reduced sleep times, and triple the risk of making an error (Rogers, 2008). The most significant risk of making an error occurred when nurses were scheduled to work 12.5 hours or more.

There are many disadvantages to nurses working long shifts. The one of most concern is that of patient safety. There is much discussion about the potential negative impact of shift work on nurses’ personal health and performance, and thus the quality of patient care. The most powerful argument is that working 12-hour shifts lead to nurse fatigue, which in turn leads to problems for both

The risks of making an error were significantly increased when work shifts were longer than twelve hours, when nurses worked overtime, or when they worked more than forty hours per week. (Trossman, 2009). Working longer hours in a high stress area will always increase the error rate. Designating an adequate number of RN positions to ensure nurses work an appropriate schedule without overtime and that their workload allows for breaks. Managerial staff must work to develop specific policies about the length of work times based on the setting, patient and provider needs. Those policies should limit nurses from working more than 12.5 consecutive hours. Provide education for all care providers on the hazards and causes of fatigue. Continue to document unsafe staffing conditions and work with others to change the current work culture so that it recognizes the effects of fatigue on patient safety, as well as the nurse. (Berger, et al. 2006)