Nursing & Overtime

Nurses are on the healthcare front line everyday. You would think they would be outside of the normal corporate efforts to turn a profit. Well guess again.

Nurses are pushed to the physical extreme when Hospitals and clinics force them to work overtime against their wishes. Why would there be a need for overtime? Because hospitals are understaffed and have minimum guidelines of staffing to maintain. Who bares the brunt of the work load? Nurses.

This summer, Governor Paterson signed the Mandatory Overtime Bill that will ban the practice for nurses in hospitals and other health care facilities, including those operated by the state. This will significantly decrease the risk of serious, preventable medical errors brought upon by fatigued and overworked nurses. The facilities are now limited to asking nurses if they want to work overtime voluntarily.

I have to say this action to protect nurses from overtime abuse by these facilities is long overdue and it’s great when the Assembly and Senate can work together on something so important. When your nursing staff is well rested and healthy, you allow our facilities to retain and recruit a vital nursing workforce, which is necessary to maintain the high standard of health care.

Mandatory overtime could be implemented during a major disaster or emergency, during an ongoing surgical procedure or in rare cases where no other alternative staffing is available to provide safe patient care. Its due to take effect in the summer of 2009.

With nursing and healthcare part of a continuing dialog in our home, I am eager to work with the Governor and Assembly on continuing education of our nursing staff and the safety of their workplace. There are bills pending that would address these issues and I would like the chance to support NYSNA as the State Senator for the 39th district.