Paid Report Time

Nurses General Nursing

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I'm curious what other hospital policies are or if there are any specific labor laws on hospitals being required to pay for time during hand off report. A little background on this, the hospital I currently work at would pay for 30 minutes of shift overlap to ensure adequate unrushed reporting. A shifting of leadership has led to them cutting that back to 15 minutes added onto the off going shifts schedule in order to give report. There are grumblings that this 15 minutes will be taken away and we are expected to give extremely expedited reports in order to decrease time paid. This raises some obvious patient safety issues as well as staff morale issues, but this administration is definitely motivated by budget. I'm trying to have my ducks in a row prior to them coming after it as I know it will be easier to dispute before taking it away than trying to get back once taken away. Thanks in advance.

Where I work, we are paid for our 30 minute report time, but get a 30 minute unpaid lunch break. If I end up not getting a lunch break, I am required to fill out a form saying so and then I get paid for that 30 minutes, but they do keep track and people who fill out the forms frequently are spoken to about their time management. Guess it's the individual institution's right to decide what they feel they should pay for, it's your decision to decide whether it's an acceptable practice.

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Department of labor doesn't mandate that they give you a lunch period. They mandate that if you are not paid for a lunch period, you are relieved of your nursing duties for that period of time. Like I said this place is arguably budget centric and not patient centric. To have 3 nurses on each shift would require an additional 4 fte to the schedule increasing the staff pay ~$300,000. That's not a fight that we are going to win anytime soon when we're fighting for 15 minutes of report time. The lack of lunch doesn't really bug me as it keeps me from eating too much. I just don't agree with the push to decrease the shift report time.

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Department of labor doesn't mandate that they give you a lunch period. They mandate that if you are not paid for a lunch period, you are relieved of your nursing duties for that period of time. Like I said this place is arguably budget centric and not patient centric. To have 3 nurses on each shift would require an additional 4 fte to the schedule increasing the staff pay ~$300,000. That's not a fight that we are going to win anytime soon when we're fighting for 15 minutes of report time. The lack of lunch doesn't really bug me as it keeps me from eating too much. I just don't agree with the push to decrease the shift report time.

Consider changing your user name to Ben Dover.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.
Consider changing your user name to Ben Dover.

LOL, I was thinking along those lines myself. 12 hour shifts with no defined breaks? I'd be not letting the door hit my butt on the way out.

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Where I work, we are paid for our 30 minute report time, but get a 30 minute unpaid lunch break. If I end up not getting a lunch break, I am required to fill out a form saying so and then I get paid for that 30 minutes, but they do keep track and people who fill out the forms frequently are spoken to about their time management. Guess it's the individual institution's right to decide what they feel they should pay for, it's your decision to decide whether it's an acceptable practice.

Where I worked as a CNA, I was required to take breaks. However, the patients' ratio to CNA was awful, so I missed a lot of breaks and without pay. I moved on. It won't happen next time. I learned a valuable lesson.

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It seems like there are really two separate issues that should be dealt with.

1- Adequate time for report to safely transfer care. There either is, or is not, enough time given.

Having people do the exact same thing they have been doing for years, but just allowing less time is dumb.

Management, in conjunction with clinical nurses could look at ways to streamline report. Lengthy verbal report may have made some sense prior to EMR. A problem with that is that many nurses are reluctant to change. "I learned 22 years ago to make boxes on a piece of paper. It's my brain. Which side is there IV? What is there I&O?...."

Maybe there is a faster, safer way to do this. Maybe not. Worth looking at.

2- People need to get paid for the work they do. Management can direct you to do it differently, but cannot just skip paying you for hours worked.

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Consider changing your user name to Ben Dover.

Weh.... weh...weh..weh..wait! What is wrong with my name Madonna?!? ;)

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There are so many things wrong with the way your unit is run. I would have run away long ago, and I'm a pretty good person when it comes to being compliant with your employer.

What do you do in a code with only 2 nurses for 6 patients? That is so unsafe, it's scary. How many hours a week do you work off the clock? How much charting and "small" things are done off the clock? And if nothing is done off the clock ever, how many things are missed, and how shotty is the charting?

I'm an icu nurse and never have more than two patients. I'm often there past shift change. It's usually 15 minutes but it sounds like at your employer, I'd be in trouble.

It's posts like this that make me thankful for my employer. Even when I get irritated with them. Only ever have two patients, I was actually singled over this past weekend, and nobody ever complains about when I leave.

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Nope, I clock out when I'm finished. I try to be efficient with my tasks within a safe manner and I understand that this is 24 hour job. Never clock out and continue working. If management has problem, nothing is stopping them from coming to the job themselves.

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Department of labor doesn't mandate that they give you a lunch period. They mandate that if you are not paid for a lunch period, you are relieved of your nursing duties for that period of time. Like I said this place is arguably budget centric and not patient centric. To have 3 nurses on each shift would require an additional 4 fte to the schedule increasing the staff pay ~$300,000. That's not a fight that we are going to win anytime soon when we're fighting for 15 minutes of report time. The lack of lunch doesn't really bug me as it keeps me from eating too much. I just don't agree with the push to decrease the shift report time.

There's where you go wrong; in light of other information about the situation, the angst over the report situation becomes an interesting "straw that broke the camel's back." I don't personally care for/need a 30-minute lunch break either; I can't relax anyway knowing that my patients are (not) being "watched," I hate the feeling of getting further behind every minute I sit there, and I don't like working with much food in my stomach anyway.

But all of that doesn't negate the principle of appropriate staffing, including nurses' opportunity to attend to personal needs (food/water/hygiene/elimination/brief respite), nor the patients' rights to receive appropriate care.

Logistically it doesn't probably work too well to excuse the poor patient care situation that exists due to too many obligations of you and your partner but then try to argue the report thing from a patient safety angle. It ends up looking like the main motivator could be the loss of 15 minutes' OT.

Trying to make the best of a difficult situation as well as the idea of going above and beyond at work - both of these separate and different from excusing increasingly bad treatment of patients and nurses. Your unit's mistake was in making excuses for the idea that it's good for anyone when two nurses are, as a matter of routine, responsible for 6 ICU patients, all telemetry, and being in-house emergency crew. And that it's okay that they run ragged doing this for 12 hours straight.

As you can now see, there was no intent to ever solve problems genuinely, and to add insult to injury there will be no acknowledgment of your valiant efforts. This is a simple matter of, "they took one beating no problem; they'll take another."

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