The evidence is just beginning to come in. There are now a number of fair to excellent quality studies addressing this issue. As an example, look here and here too.
I deliver medications to nursing homes on a part time basis; the nurses that I see routinely work 12 hour shifts, NOT including the “finishing up” time. When I first began making these deliveries I was appalled at the amount of time nurses devote to paper work. In the nursing homes I visit, CNAs have more patient contact than do the nurses.
The pharmacists at the pharmacy I deliver for routinely work 12 hour shifts, 7 days on and 7 days off.
Feh. At present we can get charged/fired/license revoked for patient neglect/abandonment if we leave just because we’ve already worked our hours. You now want to make it illegal if we stay to care for them, too? Thanks a lot, undead lawyer. :rolleyes:
No wonder the ranks of nurses and primary care physicians are dwindling. We’re being squeezed tighter and tighter between an ever-increasing need for our services, and fewer resources (money, equipment, personnel) to do the job.
Most of the front line docs I know are just trying to hang in until they can retire or find a niche job with reduced patient care responsibilities. Same for a lot of nurses I know.
Im not in the medical profession but do work 12 and on occasion 30 hour days. I cant for security reasons give too many details but it is not uncommon for me to work 10 to 15 hours past my regular 8 hour shift because Im the one who knows whats going on with a given issue.
My work has me dealing with satellite communication systems in areas where communication is critical to peoples lives. (Areas at war, disaster areas that sort of thing.) If I start a critical issue I need to see it all the way through. Passing it on to someone else can cause redundant actions, waste critical time and even cause important things to be overlooked.
As a side note I can easily go 24 hours with breaks only long enough to use the rest room and still remain focused as long as my attention is engaged. It’s the slow days that I make the most mistakes.
WHAT?
Tech companies are the worst about working people for insane hours during crunch times. And they don’t have schedules where you work 12 hours and then get days off… they just have you work 12-14 hour days until the product ships.
Depending on the state in which you work, employers will be very aggressive about insisting that you take the mandated breaks and lunches. In California, this is often true, because the state’s Labor Dept. tends to view situations where employees don’t take those breaks as violations of the rules. This is to discourage employers from having de facto approaches to breaks that are different from the *de jure * rules they post, allowing the employer to gain the value of the added work without having to add staff. The hospital in which my ex-mother-in-law worked was VERY insistent on this.
Of course, the other issue becomes scheduling; in certain wards/areas of a hospital, it’s almost impossible to schedule breaks and lunches, because the demands of the moment are impossible to know ahead of time. So it becomes catch-as-catch-can, as I am certain you are aware of and quite used to! 
I’d always assumed that it was a de facto standard that nurses were unionized, you know, like teachers. I guess my perspective’s screwed by being in a state that doesn’t recognize one’s right to work, though.
Nurses are usually hourly (“exempt”), right? So I imagine that if they’re non-union, they’re eligible for overtime reimbursement according to their state laws.
I often work in waves of massive, long hours – 12 is typical, seven days a week, no days off. It’s not unheard of to experience a run of 16 hour days, and even a 24 or greater sometimes is necessary. When I’m back in staff, though, those 8 hours feel like kindergarten. I try not to sweat the long hours, after all we have a product to get out that must meet a certain timeline, and part of being a working, non-exempt professional is the recognition that I’m not paid for an hour of my time, but for certain deliverables at certain milestone dates. Sometimes it’s frustrating when someone else’s errors cause us to work extra, but the fact is, the product must meet its ship date. Sometimes others fail to recognize their scope of work, and as a result we’ve had a union interfering with things for the last 2.5 years (hopefully it’s almost over).
I suppose neither zombie nor lawyer are going to be in descriptions of folks with doctor friends, eh?
My supposition is that implementing a “no overwork” public policy would cause more sane scheduling practices within the industry.
Honestly, we need to solve the supply side problem for medical labor, but that’s a separate discussion.
You got exempt & non-exempt backwards. Exempt = exempt from laws requiring overtime pay, mandated breaks, etc. Staff nurses in hospitals are generally non-exempt.
Thank you! It’s part of the reason I’m retired. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
That’s true, but the law and what happens at 3 AM are not always in the same universe.
I worked in California for several years. Breaks were rare. There was no place for night shift workers to go, to eat or rest outside their units. There were nurse’s lounges, but they were little more than locker rooms.
If I ate at all, it was a bag lunch eaten at the monitor/secretary’s desk. Of course, I worked in teaching hospitals. When I did occasional agency work at private hospitals, I did get set breaks, but there were other trade-offs that made full time work there less attractive.
Many nurses and doctors who work at the teaching end of the business are still excited by and for the work they do. The rush of a busy night sometimes was worth all the breaks in the world. Of course, the brightest flames burn out the quickest. Once that happens, mistakes are more likely. Most of the staff working in ICU is fairly young. You’ll see a few grizzled old hold-outs (me), but it’s really best for the adrenaline junkies.
The laws did change as far as pay for over 8/40 employees in the early '80s. I worked UCSD when they were required to start paying us OT for the last 4 hours of 12 hour shifts and pay us all back pay for the last 4 hours of all 12 hour shifts worked in the previous 3 years. That was a nice check
So, you propose to punish the victims of corporate abuse to change the system? :dubious:
Oops… I know that!