Director wants to change all 12 hr shift nurses to 10 hr!!!!

[truejewel82]

Hi All,

Many of you who work 12 hour shifts know how that is one of the greatest perks of nursing. I received a bomb when I got the news that in 8 weeks they were changing our schedules to 10 hour. I currently work in a city hospital in NYC that is unionized. But, I heard that the union can't really protect us in this case if the issue is staffing. One of the nurses approached the director of Nursing and said that our 12 hour shift is a big key to retention and job satisfaction, he said he needed DATA proving the above claims, but otherwise just wrote her off. I want to rally the nurses together and fight this because it seems like a violation of sorts. Everyone is upset and the morale is low. People have other jobs, and personal life issues that would make working an extra day a burden. Anyone have any insights, ideas that could possibly help???

[myoglobin, ASN, BSN, MSN]

This is a horrible idea and only occurs when you have executive who have never been nurses (who have actually worked as nurses on the floor) or even MD's who have worked around nurses. If this policy is attempted the first thing that will happen is that about 20% of the RN's will look for new jobs and this economy they will have no trouble finding them. Then they will have to use staffing agencies to fill the deficit(s) costing them much more money. Then, they will probably mandate "rotating" shifts where people have to work nights every month or so (because the deficits will be even more acute on the night shifts). This is of course horrible for health (it's bad enough to work nights and even worse when you cannot establish a stable long term sleep/wake cycle). More nurses will find other jobs making staffing even worse. It will be a disastrous cycle that will cost the hospital millions (the executive his/her job) and make many nurses miserable, and endanger the lives of patients (due to the short staffing). Then they will "go back to normal" until the next, new non medically experienced administrator gets some other jack aXX idea. So help me if I had the funds I would take out a full page ad in the New York Times naming the hospital with a story by line such as "Local hospital wishes to endanger patients lives to save money" with the details below in the story.

[IndiCRNA]

My old manager tried to make us go from 12's to 8's. I simply refused to do it. I informed her that I was hired to do 12 hour shifts and they were a condition of my employment. Several other key staff did the same. I was 100% ready to hand in my notice if she tried to make me change to 8 hour shifts.

She backed down.

the key is to:

1) Be a valuable employee who shows up on time for all your scheduled shifts, is a team player, and good nurse.

2) Have a plan to actually leave if the manager does not back down. Start the job search NOW.