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Bill would prevent forced overtime for PA nurses

Quality Improvement Monitor, May 12, 2005

Some Pennsylvania nurses are lobbying their state legislators to pass a bill that would ban hospitals and nursing homes from using mandatory or forced overtime for nurses, except in rare emergency situations, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"Mandatory overtime is getting in the way of giving the quality of care we want to give," Michele Uhranowsky, a nurse from Mercy Hospital in Scranton, PA, told the Post-Gazette. "Forced overtime forces nurses out of the profession they love. We need to protect patients from the dangers of forced overtime."

State Senator Christine Tartaglione (D-Philadelphia) sponsored the bill, which would ban medical facilities from directing nurses to work a second eight-hour shift immediately after one such shift, except during natural disasters or events such as a terrorist attack, airliner crash, or when the governor declares an emergency.

Tartaglione said a similar bill she sponsored last year did win approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee but never came up for a vote in the full House or Senate, the Post-Gazette reported.

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