Home » Business & Finance » Shift Work » Nursing Shortage, Nursing Errors

Nursing Shortage, Nursing Errors

© Stephen Weistling

There's a nursing shortage in the United States, and the fact of the matter is that it's not very good news for nurses, and not very good news for us as well.

A University of Pennsylvania study that was released just last month showed that nurses who worked in excess of 12.5 hours in one shift were three times as likely to make a patient care mistake than nurses who worked up to 8.5 hours in a shift.

It would have been even more interesting if the study included the number of mistakes that were made on night shift. In the absence of that data, one can only speculate on the chance of a positive correlation.

Regardless, there were 393 nurses in the study working over 5,000 shifts. They recorded the errors in logbooks, and classified them as well. The results showed that 58% of the mistakes were related to medications, 18% were procedural, 12% were chart-related, and 7% included transcription errors.

So the objective should be to reduce the number of continuous hours worked; but, with the shortage, the number of hours actually is increasing, including the number of hours of mandatory overtime being worked.

The issue of mandatory overtime is being addressed at a statewide level at present. Right now, only the states of Maine, California, New Jersey, and Oregon have banned the practice of mandatory overtime. That leaves the rest of the country up in the air over it for now.

Last year, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Representative Pete Stark (D-Cal.) sponsored legislation designed to reduce the number of mandatory overtime hours worked by nurses. So far, the bill is still stuck in committee.

Of course, when you start to talk about reducing the number of hours that nurses can work, you'd better start talking about how to increase the number of nurses, period. Unfortunately, that prospect isn't looking too good, and that's why the American Hospital Association is against the mandatory overtime legislation. The AHA is also against regulations that just went into effect from the Homeland Security Department.

The new regulations will require foreign-born nurses and other healthcare workers to obtain certification regarding their proficiency in English as well as educational transcripts and work licenses. It doesn't matter how long they've been here or where they went to school. According to the Immigration Policy Center, 17% of all nurses are foreign-born.

Maybe we need these regulations, but they aren't helping the nursing shortage. Meanwhile, we all need to understand the pressures and dilemmas nurses and their administrators face, and maybe figure out a way to pay nurses more and drug companies less. Just a thought.