Question

Lori is a new nurse who completed orientation 2 weeks ago. Her current schedule is two 12-hour and two 8-hour midnight shifts each week. Her 8-hour shifts are on Thursday and Friday and her 12-hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday. As she arrives for her last shift on Sunday, she is faced with having to take extra patients because two nurses are out with the flu. By the end of her shift on Monday morning, three day shift nurses have also called in sick, and she is next in line for a mandatory overtime shift. She is already tired and now worries that she will make a mistake. Lori complains to the charge nurse, who tells her that there is nothing she can do.

1. Does the charge nurse have the authority to make Lori work an extra shift?

Answer 1

As a professional nurse, we have to take responsibility for care the patient in any situation.

But in the present scenario, regarding Lori, she is a new nurse who completed orientation 2 weeks back and on a regular duty as per policy. Here we can see that on her last shift of the night she has taken care of extra patients because two nurses are out with the flu. But by the end of her shift, she is in a stage of tiredness and she is a stage that if she does overtime that may result in some mistake. Thus she makes a call to the charge nurse regarding her worries, but she tells her that there is nothing she can do and she is having confidence on Lori.

But when a nurse in a stage of worries and tiredness no one is having the authority to make her work an extra shift, sometimes it may result in poor performance of patient care and results in negligence of patient care due to her weakness and results in some errors and negligence that should be avoided.

Thus we can say that the charge nurse is not having the authority to make Lori work an extra shift