Mandatory Overtime

Nursing and Mandatory Overtime

Nurses have one of the most important roles in society. They provide care to people with many different illnesses and diseases. Nurses do a variety of things like give shots, draw blood, hook patients to IV’s, and all kinds of other things. Their job is to make sure their patients are comfortable and in good hands. The last couple of decades we have hit a shortage of nurses because all of the baby boomers are either retiring or dying. With that being said as the baby boomers are getting older they are getting sicker. The number of patients is increasing as the number of nurses are decreasing. Many hospitals have tried to fix the issue of low nurses by giving them mandatory overtime, so that way all of the patients

A lot of nurses even volunteer to work overtime or beyond the regular 40-hour full time workers work. However, nurses in states where mandatory overtime is in effect do not have to option to decline the overtime meaning they have to be prepared to work extra at the end of each shift often without any notice in advance. There are only 16 states that regulate mandatory overtime. They either banned it all together, or limited the number of hours each nurse is allowed to work overtime that is mandatory (Bae 61). In a study researching nurse’s hours by both voluntary and mandatory overtime the nurses that worked the longest shifts were the unhappiest with their job (Stimpfel, Sloane, and Aiken). With these types of results, it shows that nurses who voluntarily work do it for other reasons than just to do it. Both nurses who work overtime voluntarily and nurses who are required to work overtime are associated with patient dissatisfaction (Stimpfel, Sloane, Aiken). With these results mandatory overtime should just be banned

The Code of Ethics for Nurses advanced by the American Nurse Association includes the statement “the nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient,” which basically means the nurse is supposed to put their needs behind their patients (Stimpfel, Sloane, Aiken). With all of that being said every nurse that works overtime has to put the patience’s best interests into play and either give them proper service, or get a nurse who can give them proper service. It is also the moral responsibility of nurses to avoid a circumstance or “domain of nursing activity” that would cause conflict for the patient (Stimpfel, Sloane, Aiken). Conflict with the patient would include a nurse working overtime whether by voluntarily or by mandate. Even though overtime would benefit the nurse financially and benefit the hospital it would cause patient dissatisfaction which is ultimately the only thing that really matters. One of the main characteristics of the people who go into nursing is their interest in caring for people who are suffering (Bloomfield and Pegram 45). Requiring nurses to work beyond a standard 40-hour week to the extreme that they feel too exhausted to work puts them under a lot of stress because