FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 15, 2000

CONTACT:
Joan Meehan-Hurwitz, 202-651-7020
Cindy Price, 202-651-7038
rn=realnews@ana.org
www.nursingworld.org/rnrealnews

Washington, DC -- Calling it a step toward ending the unsafe practice of mandatory overtime, the American Nurses Association (ANA) applauded the introduction of a bill yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives that would limit the number of hours licensed health care workers, including registered nurses (RNs), are forced to work. The bill, H.R. 5179, the "Registered Nurses and Patients Protection Act,"introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act so that no RN would be required to work beyond eight hours in any workday or 80 hours in any 14-day work period.

Every day, nurses in hospitals across the country are forced to work up to 16-hour shifts, thus putting themselves and their patients at increased risk of error and injury. In the case of nurses, mandatory overtime is a calculated business practice used by hospital administrators as a quick fix to a nurse staffing shortage that ANA contends has been brought on in large part due to hostile working conditions for nurses.

The problem of inappropriate nurse staffing was driven home this week by a three-part series in the Chicago Tribune (Sept. 10-12), which explored the deplorable state of nurse staffing in our nation's hospitals, a situation ANA has called a "public health crisis." The article also noted that hospitals, driven by the bottom line, are imposing cost-cutting measures, such as reducing nursing staff, to save money. This practice leads to safety concerns, such as chronic under-staffing, which, when remedied by use of mandatory overtime, creates an environment where mistakes are more likely to occur.

As patient advocates, the members of the ANA and its labor arm, the United American Nurses, have taken strong positions opposing mandatory overtime and want the public to know the negative impact mandatory overtime is having on patient safety.

Testifying on staffing issues at a daylong National Summit on Medical Errors and Patient Safety Research in Washington, DC., on Sept. 11, ANA First Vice-President Patricia Underwood, PhD, RN, stated that because of cost-containment measures, nurses, physicians and others are asked to do more with less. "As hospitals have reorganized and put fewer nurses at the bedside, and as more and more hospitals have come to rely on use of overtime as a ‘solution' to inadequate staffing, the most common complaint we hear from our members is their belief and concern that these changes are putting patients at risk," she said.

The summit was held as part of the federal government's response to last year's Institute of Medicine report, which noted that up to 98,000 patients are killed each year from medical errors. But missing from the report's findings, Underwood noted, is an examination of the "full range of staffing issues," including the alarming incidence of mandatory overtime currently being used to fill gaps in staffing.

"Don't we know enough about the impact of fatigue on human judgment, and on cognitive abilities, to recognize that having a 47-year-old nurse working 16-hour shifts for three or four days in a row is dangerous?" she testified.

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The American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.6 million Registered Nurses through its 54 constituent associations. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

2000 press releases

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