Content area
Full Text
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
*To provide the best care to patients, the physical wellness of nursing staff is essential. Current evidence indicates long work hours can lead to adverse nurse and patient outcomes. * To provide quality and safe patient care, both staff nurses and nurse managers need to recognize the adverse effects of overtime, whether it is mandatory or voluntary.
*Results of this study showed overtime was not used more when there was an increase in nursing shortages.
*Further, overtime was not used to control shortages; rather, understaffing was an underlying condition of the nursing practice, at least in the study sample.
*Thus, efforts must be made not only to prevent nurses from working long hours, but also to resolve the problem of understaffing in order to retain qualified nurses in hospitals.
TO PROVIDE THE BEST CARE TO patients, the physical wellness of nursing staff is essential. Long work hours can lead to fatigue, restlessness, inadequate sleep, pain, and defi - cits in performance and reaction time as a result of increased exposure to physical demands and insufficient recovery time (Borges & Fischer, 2003; Geiger-Brown, Trinkoff, & Rogers, 2011; Trinkoff, Geiger-Brown, Brady, Lipscomb, & Muntaner, 2006). Reduced rest and recovery time leads to physiologic depletion or exhaustion that continues into the next workday (Rosa, 1995). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended nurses work no more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period and no more than 60 hours in a 7-day period to avoid error-producing fatigue (IOM, 2004).
The current evidence indicates long work hours can lead to adverse nurse and patient outcomes. Rogers, Hwang, Scott, Aiken, and Dinges (2004) found the risk of making medical errors increas - ed when nurses worked more than 12 hours per day or when they worked more than 40 hours per week. In a more current study, Trinkoff and colleagues (2011) found long work hours were significantly related to pati ent mortality after controlling for staffing levels and hospital characteristics. Olds and Clarke (2010) also found working more than 40 hours in the average week was related to nurses' perception re garding medication errors, falls with injuries, and nosocomial infections after adjusting for nurse characteristics. They also found voluntary overtime had a strong est relationship with medication errors....