Working Conditions At The American Nursing Association ( Ana )

With regard to sleepiness, several studies indicated that the average of sleep duration in 1910 to 2002 have decreased from 9 to 6 hours on workdays (National sleep foundation, 2002; Groger et al., 2004). Recently, a survey study of Roger et al. (2004) shows that an American Nurses have an average of 84 minutes more sleep on non workdays. Thus, shift work suggested as a cause of sleeping disorder among nurses where they feel of sleep during the shift. Considering the contributing factors of sleepiness, the literature identified that long working hours and rotating shifts are causing sleeping disorder. In the night and rotating shifts, the nurses are rarely obtained adequate amount of sleep. In fact, the nurses experiencing less sleeping hours (1 to 4 hour) than normal sleeping (Zeisler et al.,1980). Nevertheless, insufficient sleep is a significant reason of damaging planning, decision-making, and integration of information (Krueger, 1994; Harrison and Horne, 2000). More recent studies have revealed that long hour shifts and overtime are strongly linked to the difficulties of being a wake through the shift which leads to increase the risk of making an error (Scott et al., 2006; Roger et al., 2004).

With the concern of work-related injuries associated with mandatory overtime, many research studies have been piloted to examine the impact of overtime on nursing. A particular study conducted with 655 registered nurses in the Philippines reveals significant results in regards to the effects of nurses working mandated overtime. Results show 65% of nurses involved in the study report working over 40 hours per week. Also, 83% report working mandatory or unexpected overtime at least once a month and 15% state working overtime more than seven times each month. Furthermore, 37% of the nurses have suffered an occupational injury and 41% acquired an occupational related illness within a year span (de Castro, Fujishiro, Rue, Taglog, Samaco-Paquiz, & Glee, 2010). Mandatory overtime increases staffing absences.

West, Ahern, Byrnes and Kwanten (2007) indicate that the new graduate nurses may have not worked full-time in the past; given that graduate nurses begin their career with a full-time job can lead to exhaustion. It was discovered that shift work leads to desynchronisation of physiologically determined circadian rhythms which has a major psychobiology effect and it is commonly perceived the effects of shift work contribute to graduate nurses attrition rate. The NGNs often have a high level of stress due to disturbed sleeping patterns, as they find to adaption to shift work or rotating work hours difficult. Eventually, it leads to feelings of lack of job satisfaction, exhaustion and spending of less time with their friends and family, which can eventually could lead to burnout (West et al., 2007).

ANA rejects the adoption of overtime as a staffing solution and joints the Congress to establish national legislation to approach concerns about safe staffing and prohibition of mandatory overtime. ANA concludes that overtime is not a reasonable answer and has driven to various matters such as reduce patient satisfaction, an increase in adverse patient events, preventable medication, and medical errors and increased patient mortality. Besides, mandatory overtime reflects on job satisfaction, on nurse recruitment and retention, nurse fatigue and deficits in nurse’s work

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)

According to the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act, requiring nurses to work overtime would be “strictly limited” (ANA, 2005). This bill has been proposed in response to the nursing shortage within the United States. This is imperative to maintaining the quality of nursing care and patient safety that we provide to our patients. The bill proposes that nurses and licensed practical nurses should not be forced to work overtime, or receive retaliation/discrimination due to refusal (ANA, 2005). In addition, the bill proposes that more studies be done to learn the

notes she took back with her provided the foundation of what would later become her

The first article appraised, “The Working Hours of Hospital Staff Nurses and Patient Safety”, uses a qualitative design to provide evidence assessing how overtime shifts

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

In today’s society, overtime is the primary method that healthcare facilities are using to keep up with the high demand of staffing. Many employers mandate that healthcare workers work extra shifts and they threaten them with dismissal for insubordination, even to the point of reporting them to the state board of nursing for job abandonment.

This article was chosen because patient care and safety is said to be at the forefront of every healthcare’s overview; however, with some of the decisions made by each and every organization the above stated may not actually be the truth. The 12-hour nursing shift was introduced in the 1970’s during a massive shortage of nurses. Currently, there is roughly 75% of all hospitals using the 12-hour nurse shift. The argument for the hospitals is that with 12-hour shifts, they spend out less monies on overtime and it offers the nurse an opportunity to actually work less days a week, which offers more off-time. The hospitals further argue that with the 12-hour shifts, scheduling is easier and that the patients are in favor of having fewer nurse’s names to remember, thus feeling more comfortable with a familiar person. One point that was a real positive for the hospital is that with 12-hour shifts, there is less nurse to nurse patient handoffs; meaning the communication is of a higher quality, because the nurse spends more time with the patient thus likely being more thorough. (Rollins, 2015)

Mandatory overtime is classified as a workplace concern along with a patient safety concern (Mandatory, 2003). Mandatory overtime is the mission of hospitals, as well as, health care institutions to provide satisfactory amount of employed nurses by required overtime, commonly the twelve hour work week turns into a sixteen hour work week, with little to no notification (Mandatory, 2003). In conclusion, nurses have a typical issue with mandatory overtime and if this is advocated prior, nurses can decrease the risks for accumulated medications issues, decline in patient care and safety, a reduction in patient well-being, compiled amount of stays in the hospital, a buildup in mortality and morbidity rates, a dwindling in the hiring

Hospitals work around the clock. There is someone handing out medicine, doing paper work, or checking on their patient. The average work week is forty hours a week. Most hospitals require nurses to work mandatory overtime. Nurses shifts are twelve-hour shift, including lunch breaks. Hospitals are understaffed with nurses to fill the hours that are in a week. Nurses usually work up to one extra shift a week if not more. Long exhausting hours can cause more mistakes, fatigue, and resentment towards your job. Over worked nurses will experience one if not more of these and it will affect their work ethic. Overtime has caused most if not all of these symptoms to nurses at least once in their career.

“Mandatory overtime in nursing is not comparable with mandatory overtime in other fields because the consequences of being overly fatigued for nurse may literally have life-and-death consequences” (Huston, C., 2014). Unfortunately, mandatory overtime appears to be practicing more frequently in nursing which becomes an ethical dilemma that is grasped by nurses as a violation of their human rights. Furthermore, nurses are also resentful that they bear the personal, professional, and legal burden on the critical issue that is negatively affecting health care professionals, patients, and system in general. The majority of times compulsory overtime used as a cost saving measure to control chronic nursing shortage in

Nurses nowadays -beside their work- spend a lot of time to in recording health care related documents through electronic medical records to improve patient satisfaction and care coordination. As a result, in USA, more than 50% of full-time nurses work an average of seven hours of overtime each week. This situation may solve the hospitals nurse scheduling problem in short term, but it has a lot of consequences in the long term. Studies showed that, the nurses who work 40 hours in a week or 12 hours in a shift are more likely to prone to turnover and job dissatisfaction, which in return, negatively affects the hospital