Overtime

Tired nurses make mistakes, that's why it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. It's a patient safety issue. You don't think 80 hours a week, week after week is excessive? I also happen to work for the state, where in many cases the state loses.
I'm not sure about time directives. I do know we need to have 8 hours in between shifts.

I love 12 hour shifts, and would not even consider working at a facility that did not offer them to me. I prefer to have more whole days off per week.
It depends on what one has to do when they get home from work and what works for them.

But to make a rule that there cannot be shifts longer than 8 hours per day because the 12s do not work for some is just pure crazy. That is why we have the variety that we do. And it is up to the nurse to decide what they feel safe with, each should know their own limitations.

I do not work 16 hour shifts anymore, and have not for sometime. But again, that is a choice that I have made and for someone to tell someone else that they cannot do it is just not how we do things here in the US. Each person takes responsibility for their own actions, and as long as the overtime is not mandated by the employer and the nurse wishes the overtime, then it should be something between them, and not anyone else.

Working a 12 hour shift, or even a 16 hour shift specifically has nothing to do with the time off between shifts. That is another matter as well, and has to do with the contract that the union has in your facility, if there is one.

Lawsuits should not even be part of this, but if the nurse feels that they can practice safely, and that is their concern, and theirs alone to make.

This is my opinion only and just generalized and not pointed to any poster here.

sure why not let the truckdrives, air line pilots, train engineers decided what is best for them too..what a safe outcome we would have.

If it works for nurses why not for everyone...