STAFFING AND MANDATORY OVERTIME
FACT SHEET
Recently, Registered Nurses at The Medical Center performed a
study of staffing patterns for one week on several different nursing floors
throughout the hospital. These were
some of the results:
Schedules were
often posted with “holes”.
¨
On one nursing floor, in
one week the schedule contained 41 “holes” or shifts that needed to be filled. That translates into 328 hours with no scheduled nurse.
¨
On another floor, the schedule contained 35 shifts that needed to be filled or 276 hours with no scheduled nurse.
¨
On another floor, in one week, 16 out of 21 shifts contained 1 to 3
holes.
Mandatory Overtime or “flexing
up” is used as a routine method to fill holes.
¨
In one week, nurses on one floor were flexed
up a total of 224 hours. That is an average of 4 nurses per day.
¨
On another floor, in a 14-day period, nurses
were flexed up 213 hours, approximately 2 shifts per day.
¨
On another floor, out of 16 shifts that were
short nurses, 6 of them were staffed by mandating RNs.
¨
On one unit, last minute call offs created
only 17% of the holes in the schedule.
¨
On two units, out of 604 hours needed ,176
hours were due to call offs.
Issued by Heritage Valley Chapter of
1199P/SEIU
724-728-1744