Staffing hours

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Hi All,

I am curious to know what you all think of this situation: Can a facility force a part time nurse to stay past their time. This is not a hospital, it is a psychiatric residential treatment facility for children. Management refuses to hire a night shift or per diem nurse, and apparently are trying to manuver the evening shift nurses (all part-time) to avoid spending any money. Evening shift hours were already changed, without input from us. They told us that they had a contract with the "state" that says nurses will be there until 11pm. Now, their reasoning is, that if an admission is planned to come in by midnight, the evening nurse will stay, do the admission and make a pharmacy run to the 24 hour pharmacy that is 20 minutes away from the facility. Again, not a hospital, no pharmacy on site and no full time evening nurses. There is no union. Is this an unfair labor practice?

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

Call the BON. There may be a law in your state regarding mandatory OT for nurses.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

This whole situation sounds a bit sketchy to me. I am not a psych nurse, but it certainly does not seem to be a good practice to ask a nurse to travel - in her/his own vehicle, I assume- to a pharmacy in the middle of the night to pick up psychotropic drugs. Hmm - there just seems to be a bunch of safety concerns here. What happens if you are in a car accident? Robbed? Carjacked? Is this facility JC accredited?

I agree with the previous poster - check with your BON to find out about mandatory OT.

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hmmm iwould find another job

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