JonDoe1987

Hello Im a male LPN i am 19 and have 7 months nursing experience and a few years as a cna. (cna at 16 lpn at 18) I work at a smaller hospital. And recently a large number of people have quit. I work in the ED/ER and was sceduled to work from 3pm-11am. 16hrs. However on the med surg dept. their lpn quit the day prior (saturday morning) finished her shift. So they new that they would not have a lpn the next day on the floor. They only have 2 nurses and 1 tech on floor at a time) They couldnt get any of the staff nurses to come in, and agency wouldnt come. The facility has pissed off 1/2 the agencies in area and refuse to send nurses to us. They told me that i was going to be pulled to the med/surg at 7a to work till 11a. I reluctantly agreed. Then come 11am i was ready to go home and they said i cant. It would be abandonment and i would loose my license and i had to stay till 7pm, i said i cant, i have to work ed from 7pm-7am. They told me it didnt matter. I had to stay and work a tripple then. I was infuriated. For fear of my license, i had to stay. Luckily i made no med errors, etc. It took till 11pm (33hrs) to get a replacement to work ER. As for the DON coming in, we no dont have one at the moment. Now my question is i wana find out the nursing laws. What is the maximum number of hours they can force me to work. I work 2 16hrs and one 12hr a week. back to back to back. 16, 12, 16. Ive been doing it a while and have ocasionaly has to stay maybe and hour, hour and a half but that was it. Never more. Never complained about it. BTW i work in florida. I checked the florida nursing site and couldnt find the labor laws. This had me ticked because the other person in ED couldnt take over. On night shift we get a physician, a lpn or rn and a paramedic. That night we had a Nurse practitioner as the physician in building, and a lpn (me) and a paramedic, (who to be honest, knows more then me, then again he has far more experience). Is there anything i could have done to save myself. One last thing, i then had to come back and work the next day.