CNA welcomes federal bill to ban mandatory overtime
The California Nurses Association today hailed the introduction of federal legislation to prohibit mandatory overtime for licensed health care employees (excluding physicians). Sponsors of the legislation said it would crack down on the increasing trend of hospitals to require nurses to work overtime shifts, and this will help improve the quality of patient care because nurse fatigue resulting from forced overtime work is a serious threat to patient safety.
The bill was unveiled at a Washington D.C. press conference today attended by Members of Congress Tom Lantos (D-CA), James McGovern (D-MA), and Hilda Solis (D-CA) and representatives of CNA, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.
"Nurses all across our nation are being forced to work overtime when they are exhausted, when they have already worked a full shift. This legislation will give nurses essential protection from forced overtime," Lantos said. "This is a public health issue as much as it is an issue of exploiting workers. Exhausted health care workers can inadvertently and unintentionally put patients' safety at risk. America's nurses put their hearts into caring for individuals, and it is inhumane the way hospitals are permitted to treat their nurses."
The Lantos-McGovern-Solis bill amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to bar mandatory overtime beyond 8 hours in a single work day or 80 hours in any 14 day work period, except in the case of a natural disaster or in the event of a declaration of emergency by federal, state or local government officials. Voluntary overtime is also exempted.
In a statement praising the bill, CNA President Kay McVay, RN, said, "an end to forced overtime is a central component of restoring the patient safety net, and a key ingredient in tackling the nursing shortage. Throughout the country too many hospitals are requiring forced overtime as a substitute for regular scheduled staffing. Nurses find that at the end of a long shift, they are being mandated to work another eight hours or more, when they no longer have the stamina and mental alertness to provide the quality care their patients need."
"We need to give nurses more power to decide when overtime hours hurt their job performance," said Lantos. "A nurse knows better than anyone - better than his or her supervisor and certainly better than a profit-driven hospital administrator - when he or she is so exhausted that continuing to work could jeopardize the safety of patients. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to know that forcing nurses to work 12 or 16 hours at a time is a prescription for bad health care."
Source: California Nurses Association
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