Likewise, patients need nurses who are able to execute the sophisticated thinking, decision making, and technical skills required in delivering quality patient care. Forcing RNs to regularly work 16 hours or more at a stretch is dangerous, and the American public needs to know about this practice and the risk it presents to patients. Of course, real emergencies happen and nurses can always be counted on to respond, but using excessive mandatory overtime as a way to deal with on-going staffing shortages is wrong. The IOM recommends that part of the solution rests in developing safe health care systems that address work hours, work loads, sufficient staffing and personnel support, shift assignments as well as the impact on patient care when nurses work beyond their ability to provide safe and quality services. It is absolutely derelict, in light of the IOM s findings and recommendations, that hospitals are still willing to jeopardize patient care.
Many hospitals claim a nursing shortage as the reason to mandate overtime.
While an RN shortage is a real issue in some areas, there are ways to address staffing that do not force RNs to work inhumane hours. Mandating excessive overtime is a calculated business practice aimed at saving hospitals money, yet hospitals are reporting profit margins higher than they have enjoyed in the past. Hospitals reduce expenses thus increasing profit by employing insufficient numbers of nurses and minimizing the number of employees paid benefits. Hospitals routinely keep too few RNs on staff to provide appropriate coverage and address fluctuating patient care needs. ANA supports the RNs currently on strike in Nyack, NY, and in Worcester, Mass., who have gone out in protest over mandatory overtime.