TELLING THEIR STORY — PEF nurses testify on the dangers of mandatory overtime. Shown: (L-R) Domenic Campanella, Jemma Hanson and Debbie Egel. Sandra Hammond appears behind Hanson. Photo by Richard Dillard

PEF pushes bill to end mandatory overtime

By DEBORAH A. MILES
Just two weeks after hundreds of nurses rallied at the state Capitol to end mandatory overtime, PEF leaders and nurses kept the momentum alive by testifying before a joint hearing of the Assembly Standing Committees on Labor and Health on May 18 in Manhattan.

PEF President Roger Benson told the committee, chaired by Assembly members Susan John and Richard Gottfried, “as many as 98,000 hospital patients die annually in the United States as the result of medical errors, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine.

“New York state accounts for an estimated 6,600 of these fatal errors,” Benson testified.

When questioned about this, Benson replied, “It’s absolutely stunning to me. If there were some other problem that caused as many as 6,600 deaths per year, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in this state. The lack of leadership from the governor and Legislature has allowed this to happen year, after year, after year. It really is a crisis in health care.”

Fearing medical errors
PEF nurse organizer Nancy Wolff read the testimony of Icilda Innocent, a community mental health nurse at Brooklyn Developmental Disabilities Services Office. Innocent was unable to attend. That testimony focused on working 24-hours straight.

“The emotional strain was crushing,” Wolff read. “There is a constant fear in your mind that you will forget something or make a mistake. You pray you don’t. You fear administering the wrong medication or dosage to a patient. Thank God there was no emergency that day.”

In her testimony, Region 11 Coordinator Jemma Hanson also focused on the dangers of medical errors caused by mandatory overtime and talked about the importance of setting standards for staffing ratios.

“I don’t want the next fatality to be my mother, or even yours,” Hanson said.

Effect on family
A nurse from the Capital District Psychiatric Center in Albany, Domenic Campanella, said, “When I worked in the crisis unit, 15- and 16-year-olds who were suicidal would be brought in. On more than one occasion, they were the children of colleagues. Their mothers were forced to put in so much overtime, they didn’t have the time to devote to their own children or realize their level of depression. It is so sad and unnecessary.”

Sandra Hammond, a nurse from the Stutzman Addiction Treatment Center in Buffalo, provided a moving moment in the testimony when her voice broke and she cried while talking about the worst short-staffing crisis in the history of that facility. It came up at the same time her father was diagnosed and being treated for cancer and her mother was wheelchair-bound.

Plea for help
Deborah Egel, co-chair of the PEF Nurses Committee, cited examples of more than a dozen other states that have enacted laws or regulations about mandatory overtime, and how retention has become less of a problem.

“There are 69,000 nurses in the state of New York who are licensed and choose not to work in the profession,” Egel testified.

“That is why we rally every year to implore you to please help us,” Egel said.

And again, the Legislature did not pass the bill.

The Communicator July/Aug. '06

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