Is your facility warning staff for overtime, for missing lunch breaks or other?

jlanderslvn · Oct 18, 2007

I WORK DOUBLE WEEKENDS AT AN LTC FACILITY WHILE I AM GETTING MY RN. THE NURSES THROUGH THE WEEK FEEL LIKE I HAVE EXTRA TIME ON MY HANDS SO THEY LEAVE THINGS FOR ME. I AM SUPPOSED TO WORK 6 AM TO 10 PM BUT IT IS MORE LIKE 545 TO 1130 OR 12 BECAUSE OF ADMISSIONS, CNA's THAT ARE CONSTANTLY GOING TO SMOKE AND CHARTING ON 30 REHAB PATIENTS AND 5 GTUBES AND TRACHES. I LOVE MY PATIENTS BUT I FEAR THAT THEY FEEL NEGLECTED SOME DAYS. THEY ASK WHY IM NOT SPENDING AS MUCH TIME CARING FOR THEM AND I DONT SAY THE REAL REASON , BECAUSE MY LOAD HAS DOUBLED AND I HAVE LESS STAFF.IT IS SAD.ADMIN COMPLAINS ABOUT ME NOT TAKING LUNCH SO MOST TIMES I DON'T REPORT IT AND THEY COUNCEL ME ON THE OVERTIME AND I TELL THEM TO GET MORE HELP THEN I CAN GET OFF ON TIME.THEY HAVEN'T DONE IT YET SO WE BOTH LIVE WITH IT.

icunurse2005 · Oct 19, 2007

There are some people who socialize on the clock who make it bad for the rest of the staff. I would love to see our manager walk through @ 0700 & 1900 and ask what can be done to help you get out on time. Then they would see who is working & who is just visiting. Also, they could prevent interruptions to our change-of-shift report. In my unit if your assignment is the first 2 beds you can count on numerous interruptions to report. Our unit is closed only 4 hours daily, 0600-0800 & 1800-2000, the doors lock down and a badge is required to open the doors. That bell will still ring many times and the door must be opened manually. The manager or charge nurse could certainly handle that. Also, DRs take your charts or round during report and need a bedside nurse. They could handle many of those cases, too. With all the mandated forms and double and triple charting & consequences for incremental overtime, it is cutting in to additional time I would spend @ the bedside. I often clock out for lunch and set an alarm to remind me to clock back in because I am still working. I LOVE bedside nursing, but these administrative hassles really get in the way.

tish666 · Oct 19, 2007

My facility has started writing us up for clocking in early or staying over without a "good reason" . The reason? Nursing is $1,000,000. over budget for the year. Of course all the extra help we had for JCAHO and Magnet were counted. Our old staffing levels were 5:1, once in a while 6:1, team leaders had 2 patients. Now we subtract 4, (Team leaders each get 2) then divide the remaining patients by 5. if you have 23 you get 4 floor nurses, 3 of whom have 6 patients. But , we have also been warned that Patient Satisfaction scores are not supposed to fall. I work a Medical/Oncology floor. As hard as we try I just don't see this working.

susyn153 · Oct 19, 2007

I could not agree more, I worked for a nursing home that saw me sit to lunch uninterupted maybee once the entire year I worked there. I also never got paid for 30 min out of each day that I was there and WORKING. I also got hassled for having a cup of tea (covered) or a bottle of water at my desk. My too smart response was "do you want me malnourished and dehydrated" they did not appreciate that response. I actually got written up for having a bottle of water. I wished I knew about the uninterupted thing, that would have been great. We were absolutly not allowed to clock in early or late, it did lead to ALOT of animosity on the next shift. They also thought that 30 patients to one nurse was ok because my supervisor was supposed to help out. She was never there. They had a massive turnover and it so disheartened me that I have not worked in LTC since. I just can't face it.

It's a 24 hour facility. Not everything can be done in one shift.
Our hospital was forever pushing the envelope lol. A couple of years after the lunch fiasco, we were told that if we worked over and hadn't received prior approval, we wouldn't be paid for it. They were also caught adjusting some clock-in times. Then there was the time they decided to do away with our film badges we wore when caring for radiation patients. And yes, I called the appropriate federal agencies in each of the above instances, and the hospital received notice that no, they weren't above the law no matter how badly they wished to be.
One of the nurses on our sister unit reported her director had instructed her staff to clock out on time and then complete all their tasks they weren't able to finish on time. They got slammed for that as well.
But if we sit back and say nothing, these hospitals will continue to abuse their staff on these issues and get away with it.

futurenursethatcares · Oct 19, 2007

Our facility hates overtime. I work at a LTC facility and if we get into too much overtime they think it means we are not using our time wisely to get everything done. Like charting, giving report at the end of shift etc. Well I work overnights and we work with a skeleton crew at night for a facility that has over 100 residents. Our crew consists of 6-7 people each night. There are soooo many nights I do not get my breaks and it is very hard to get out of there at 7:30am right on the dot on a normal night. Then if there is a fall or we have to ship someone to the hospital whatever there is absolutely no way I will be leaving on time. Especially if I am to do my job properly, making sure all my charting is complete, my relief nurse has a proper report, etc. So my question to these facilities that gripe about overtime is do you want us to properly do our job or to half-ass it just to leave on time? I know I get frustrated with some of the nurses in our facility who do their job half-assed just d/t laziness.

Just my 2 cents,

Shawna

radox · Oct 19, 2007

No because if they did the entire system would collapse!:balloons:

survivor08 · Oct 19, 2007

What is so funny is that all summer everyone was being warned about clocking out "no break", getting RWL's, working short handed, etc. and heaven forbid get your full hours let alone a minute of OT, even if we did work through ALL of our breaks.... this month (now that so many people have quit...imagine that) we are having to work 2 shifts per month MANDATORY OT!

churlgirl · Oct 20, 2007

My facility has been attempting to decline OT for quite some time now, even after the OT slip has been signed by the charge nurse. I'm efficient in my job, and rarely put in for OT, but when you're over pt census and short a nurse, it's pretty tough. We're expected to know before noon (on a 7:30-15:30 shift) if we will be putting in for OT, but when you mention it, you get told, "well there is no OT". How about hiring some staff to fill the 3 or 4 empty lines?........Just a thought.

EmmaG, RN · Oct 20, 2007

if we will be putting in for OT, but when you mention it, you get told, "well there is no OT".

This is infuriating.

If every nurse would simply drop what they are doing (short of a code, of course) at the end of their shift, give report and simply leave, it would soon become obvious to the idiots in administration that it isn't a matter of efficiency. Maybe as unfinished tasks begin to pile up, passed from shift to shift, docs and patients will start to raise hell. We can complain about nurse/patient ratios and acuity til we're blue in the face and we'll continue to be ignored and bullied by managers and administration, but let their "customers" begin to complain, and perhaps they'll sit up and take notice.

I do NOT work for free. If I'm working past the end of my shift, or I don't get a lunch break, I will be paid for it.

Katie-in-charge51, BSN, RN · Oct 22, 2007

I would really like them to try! With late/early admissions,10 or more pts apiece, it is literally impossible to finish charting by shift end. I doubt if they want us leaving without charting and covering their butts! There are not enough of us to go around now, much less if they started disciplining nurses for overtime. They are lucky we stay to finish. I have never had a threat or warning about overtime. My direct boss doesn't care if there is overtime, only if the unit is staffed. If management starts issuing warnings, I'm OUTTATHERE! After 35 years, it would not be a good idea to tick me off.............................Katie

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Oct 22, 2007

In our unit it's common for breaks to be short, interrupted, or missed altogether. The only ones who get paid for missed breaks are the code team... two RNs and an RT. The rest of us may end up missing our breaks because of a code, but that doesn't count. We also put in a lot of extra time at the end of the shift because our reports are given face-to-face at the bedside on patients with multi-system problems, each of which must be given due attention. Although we usually have only one patient, when the oncoming nurse arrives at the bedside at 7:05 and report takes 20 or more minutes to complete to hospital standards, no accommodation is made for the fact that the clock stops at 7:15. When you have two patients, and are giving report to two different nurses, it could be 7:45 by the time you're done. And that doesn't even consider the late/early admission, the critically unstable patient who needs two nurses for a period of time and there's no extra staff coming on, the change-of-shift code (and they happen often enough!)... and on and on. When you fill out an OT slip, it might be weeks before it comes back to you "not approved" with a note attached... you didn't tell the manager/charge nurse in advance that you weren't going to get your break/your patient was going to destabilize/your relief was going to be late/you had two hours of charting from an event in the last hours of the shift... whatever. We are continually getting emails from management reminding us that breaks have to be completed by a defined time and that we're responsible for making sure we get them when we're supposed to. Nothing is ever said to the ones who are habitually late going for or coming back from theirs which makes me late for mine, or the fact that we can't be compelled to take our breaks in the first or last hours of the shift. I often find myself sitting in the break room when the next shift starts rolling in because it was the only way I was going to get a break at all. Makes me so mad!

Until recently OT was such a bad word that we'd work dangerously short for days at a time. Then the professional responsibiblity complaints started piling up and now we have approval to call in OT to fill the gaps to staff us to 16 nurses per shift. If we can get people to come in... That kind of OT is different.

NursesRmofun, ASN, RN · Oct 25, 2007

In addition to warning about not getting paid for no lunch, they also do not PAY OT unless it is preapproved and/or you file an OT slip. I never did for the half hour here and there. And I am sure I did not get paid. They steal money all the time that way.

Is your facility warning staff for overtime, for missing lunch breaks or other?

Is your facility warning staff for overtime, for missing lunch breaks or other reason