SEEING IS BELIEVING — Region 11 Coordinator Jemma Marie-Hanson and Executive Board member Deborah Egel meet at the Creedmoor Addiction Treatment Center in Queens in July with Assembly members Mark Weprin and Jeffrey Dinowitz, chair of the Assembly Committee on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse. Egel invited the lawmakers to visit Creedmoor and the Bronx ATC to educate them about the treatment centers. They’re looking over the ATC annual report. — Photo by NYS Assembly
New forms aid battle for safe staffing, no forced overtime

By KATRINA HOWARD, RN
The fewer nurses the state has, the harder it works those who remain.

“The state’s reliance on mandatory overtime is like throwing lead weight on a sinking ship,” says June Edwards, co-chair of the PEF Nurses Committee. “Nurses are leaving their profession, because they can’t go home at the end of the day.”

Among the committee’s many efforts to curb this abuse, is revision of the Protest of Assignment form which allows the more than 8,000 nurses represented by PEF to formally protest mandatory overtime and other inappropriate assignments, while documenting the circumstances of that protest.

“The revised forms will be easier to fill out,” says Debbie Egel, the committee’s other co-chair.

“As our nurses complete these forms and submit copies of them to our committee, they will be giving PEF powerful, documented evidence of just how widespread and dangerous this problem is,” she says. “It will be one of the most effective tools we could have in the campaign for safe staffing.”

“Protest of Assignment forms can track patterns of understaffing to build a case for change during contract negotiations and at labor-management meetings,” says Edwards, who is also a member of PEF’s contract negotiating team.

“We hope that by making it easier to complete, more nurses will use the form when it’s needed,” Edwards says.

Specifically, the form documents a nurse’s objections to an assignment he or she believes might put a patient at risk because of inadequate staffing, unsafe floating, or the nurse’s lowered acuity level that can result from an exhausting double shift.

“When you document your concerns at the time you are given the assignment, you assure accuracy in reconstructing the events,” Egel says. “It is a formal record of the occurrence. It provides a paper trail of evidence.

“As public-sector nurses, we face more problems because our patients often present more serious and complex challenges than those in the private-sector,” Egel says. “Relying on exhausted nurses to deliver care to such challenging patients increases the potential for error and inadequate care.”

Most PEF nurses work in demanding, stressful environments such as hospitals, veterans’ homes, psychiatric facilities, prison infirmaries and other health care settings.

Edwards and Egel stress the individual RN is the only one who can determine if their assignment poses a risk. And if she or he is forced to work under protest, that documentation may be needed as evidence to defend their job or license if something goes seriously wrong on the shift.

Under the NYS Nurse Practice Act, registered nurses are required to act as patient advocates. Nurses have a responsibility to their patients to record staffing problems.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “It often requires more courage to dare to do right, than to fear to do wrong.”

The new forms will be available soon. Watch for them on the nurses' section of the PEF Web site, or ask your local PEF leaders for copies when they are available.

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