Do Other Professionals Skip Restroom Breaks And Meals?

[TheCommuter]

I sometimes believe that inpatient bedside nursing is intertwined in a bizarre professional culture where the skipping of bathroom breaks and lunch periods is not only common, but occasionally encouraged by our peers and the powers that be.

Can you name any other professionals who systematically place the needs of their clients above their own?

Countless nursing staff members who work in inpatient bedside settings such as hospitals and nursing homes frequently bypass the breaks to which they are legally entitled. According to a study that was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2005), nurses are regularly sacrificing their breaks and meal periods to provide patient care. Although many of us already knew that that this practice was going on for quite some time, it does not bode very well for our personal health or job satisfaction.

After all, who wants to work anywhere from eight to twelve hours in a physically demanding role without any breaks?

I can see why numerous nurses explore career options away from the bedside.

According to Fink (2010), while the research confirms what nurses have known for years-few nurses get full breaks; long shifts + heavy responsibility + lack of breaks = fatigue and increased potential for mistakes-part of the blame may lie with nurses themselves. Some nurses forgo their breaks, especially in facilities with toxic work environments, because their callous coworkers or unsympathetic supervisors will endlessly gripe about having to cover an additional patient load during the time away from the floor. Other nurses skip breaks because they feel they might fall further behind with their tasks if they sit down for an uninterrupted lunch or leave the unit to use the restroom.

And even though healthcare facilities must legally pay nonexempt employees who work through unpaid meal periods, the managerial staff at some of these workplaces may subtly discourage nurses from completing 'no lunch' paperwork by taking disciplinary action against workers who submit a large number of these forms.

It is clear that both bedside nurses and the powers that be share some blame for this problem. Facilities need to do their part by encouraging staff to take all legally entitled breaks while taking steps to ease the intense workload.

The workload of bedside nurses can be made more manageable through safe staffing ratios, more streamlined charting, less redundant paperwork, and supportive management. Nurses must do their part by taking all breaks to which they are entitled and willingly covering the patient load of coworkers who wish to leave the floor for a break. Some hospitals employ part-time relief nurses who are on the unit solely to cover for breaks.

In summary, we must take care of our bodies and minds by taking breaks. No reasonable person can work nonstop day after day, year after year without feeling some type of resentment and burnout. To optimally take care of patients, we need to take care of ourselves first.

work-cited.txt

[OCNRN63, RN]

Here is an example of why nurses are not considered professionals, treated as such, or compensated as such.

The comparison of waitressing to nursing has gone unnoticed.

"Waitress... my ventilator is alarming!"

No one is saying that nurses are the same as waitresses. The point was there are many people who work in environments that frequently cause them to miss breaks. Our pharmacists used to go without lunch many times if the infusion room was crazy. And if the infusion room was crazy, it's a guarantee they're getting slammed. There were only two of them v 10-15 nurses and about 80-90 patients a day.

[OCNRN63, RN]

I don't understand, are your pts so unstable that they would die or come to serious harm if you popped in the BR for two minutes. Anything less than a true emergent situation can wait a couple minutes. Pain meds can wait. Assessments can wait. Dressing changes can wait. Enven a new admit or a transfer can wait as long as they're stable. Even if I'm way behind at work I can stop to take a leak. What are you afraid is going to happen in two minutes? No one will die.

I used to hold it and run around like crazy. Then I realized the same thing--no one is going to die in two minutes if I go to the BR. Even if they code while I'm in the BR, I think someone else will step in.

I don't disagree that we need better staffing, better compensation, etc. But the Martyr Mary act isn't helpful to our cause either.

[breaktime]

I keep reading how the people complaining are Martyr Mary and yet generally it is within the same post people say you can find time to take a break. No, YOU can find time to take a break, that doesn't mean every other nurse out there does, as people and situations vary greatly. In addition, saying they can find time is suggesting the problem is them, and not with the environment many nurses work in. What I really don't understand is why we are arguing about whether or not there is a problem, instead of simply agreeing on what the problem really is: hospital systems and what have you that don't care about their staff and our inability as a profession to, and here is the key, collectively stand up for nurses/nursing. Unfortunately the best thing we've got right now that I know of is the ANA, which certainly doesn't stand up for us (nor have the respect/power) as the AMA does for doctors. A single nurse, or even a small group of nurses going to management about staffing issues, or even safety issues, is not going to phase the upper management of large corporate systems. Even pointing out research about the correlation of patient ratios and mistakes/errors won't work. Why? Because until that corporate entity is actually feeling the financial impact of those errors, they don't care.

[gcupid]

It takes two minutes to get to the bathroom after you walk the halls in some facilities, lol!.... Another 2 minutes to pee and to wash hands and another 2 minutes to make it back.... You have to force yourself to say no to everybody and make them wait... I will make a public announcement at the nursing station that I have to go and now it's required to carry cell phones.... So I leave the phone at the nursing station, so that I don't get calls while I'm using the bathroom.. It's not bad time management, it's called a saturated workload.

[OCNRN63, RN]

OK. Whatever. No one in health care suffers more than nurses. Ever. Not previously, not now and not in the future. Nurses will always have the worst working conditions, the worst pay, the worst schedules, etc. They will be forced to stay in bad environments for the entirety of their professional lives. There will never be options. Future nurses will be required to have catheters and colostomies. They will have to have portable TPN and lipids so they will maintain their BS during their shifts. It will never, ever get better.

Does that cover it?

[nurse_starlight]

I remember taking less than 10 bathroom breaks while in nursing school.

[Nurse Mommy]

A very wise nursing instructor would always end a long day of clinical by telling her students "Take good care of yourself, because noone will do it for you." And she's right. As I was a floor nurse for a long time, I was just as guilty as the next, going 8-16 hrs on the job without eating (I have kidney problems so I have always been pretty good about the pee breaks). I was down to a shocking 95 lbs on my 5'4 frame, sick all the time, and eventually my periods stopped. I had to quit my job at this specific facility, because on top of it all, it was extremely high stress and I was stuck doing at least 2 mandations a week.It took my health to finally put my foot down and start taking 15 minutes to eat.

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

I always find the time to pee. I don't always have time to eat...I've learned to eat on the run but sometimes that isn't possible, either. Where I work, we can tell management that we didn't get a lunch break and they will pay us the time we usually get docked for.

[Flatlander]

I'm wondering if anyone on this forum is or has been employed in a Magnet Hospital. I hear they're supposed to be nurse-friendly. Anyone out there have experience in one of them? Is it any better? Do nurses feel empowered to effect change?

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

To those who have said "it isn't just nurses..." Very true. Prior to nursing, I was a guest services manager for a very busy hotel. It wasn't uncommon for management to work 60 hours per week. Finally, near burnout, I quit. After 10 years, I'd had enough. I've learned my lesson, and I know my limits. I decided prior to nursing that I'm not allowing work to rule my life to that degree ever again. It is the fault of poor management that such conditions are imposed on nurses, or anyone in a service industry, for that matter. Unless there's an emergency, you need to somehow find the time to have a break. Easier said than done sometimes, but there are ways. One hospital I worked at, we were on a buddy system, for example, and we used to cover each other.

[ArrowRN, BSN, RN]

Brilliant post. Needed to be said again so I quoted you. :)

Your post made some good points, but perhaps a nursing student/cable technician should think twice before questioning a nurse's judgment as to how long they can safely step away from their patients.

As I said earlier, everyone keeps quoting "2 minutes." But there's stopping what you're doing, walking however far to where it is, for the majority of us we have to pull down our pants, sit down, pee, wipe, stand up, pull up pants, flush, wash hands, get back to where we were. (Add in the time to cover the toilet seat for the more germaphobic among us.) I cannot be the only one here that it takes more than "two minutes" to pee.

In an ICU setting, they might die. In a step-down, they could decompensate pretty quick. Most any setting, you could have a fall because it takes too long to stop peeing and pull up your pants, wash your hands and get all the way down the hall when a bed alarm goes off.

The fact is, rushing to pee because we have nobody to listen out for our patients while we go pee because those nurses our working with an unsafe ratio is a problem for a lot of nurses.

It's bad enough that management blames our inability to safely handle insanely unsafe workloads on our poor time management skills. Having our fellow nurses (or nursing students) blame our inability to handle insanely unsafe workloads on our lack of desire to carry around a granola bar in our pocket to scarf down while charting instead of taking the lunch that we get our pay docked for is just adding insult to injury.

I'm lucky now. I generally get a lunch. I usually get time to pee. That doesn't mean that it's not still a problem for a large part of our profession (especially those without a union.)

Well my thoughts were all in reference to bedside nurses who are making a rounds or something like that in a non emergency environment. Its obvious an ER, ICU or OR nurse, things will be a bit more difficult and yes the patient could die. I won't expect a surgeon to start an incision and then say "hold up, I gotta peepee",same for a nurse in ICU with a patient who is gushing blood from a femoral artery, all that is common sence.

In any case the original poster wanted to know what was going on in other professions and the question remains what is safe and what is unsafe for both you and the patient. To be frank, what will one do if they gotta poop? hold it? for how long? you can only hold up nature for a certain time, agreeing that some can hold longer than others but after that...all hell will break loose.

So what exactly are some solutions? Is it fixing one's own faulty time management? Lack of respect for your patient? Lack of self control? Improper staffing by management so one can have fixed breaks? In the land of free speech shouldn't we be free to pee?:rotfl: lol

[RNfaster]

I try to take pee breaks at least once a day. The phone often rings while I'm in the bathroom or on a lunch break. One time it rang three different times when I was trying get to pee. I answered it each time and then finally got to do my other "business."