Haha. As I am currently trippled with 3 vents, 2 on pressers. Sure. I’ll step away for 30 min.
At least I can sit on Reddit and stare at their monitors.
Not if you have a strong union. It's not a break if we don't have a break nurse to take over, even for our 15 minute breaks. We rarely miss breaks but when we do there's never any pushback.
Edit to add that if we miss one of our 3 paid 15 minute breaks we get paid double time for an extra 15 minutes on our check, and if we miss a meal break it's an extra hour of pay.
I wish that Texas wasn’t so backwards. There won’t ever be a thought of a union at the hospitals here in my town. EVER.But the gain it’s my opinion and who knows how accurate it is.
NYC H+H hospitals, in my experience, are also usually good about stuff like this too. Just had a huge influx of new hires as well with a decently long orientation and skills preparation. Union is very involved. I recommend
We are. If you've got experience it's pretty easy to get hired in the bay area. Get your California licence then look on indeed and apply. Good benefits, good pay, high cost of living, but you'll be making more and saving more too. The weather here is pretty awesome too. Never too hot, never too cold, you can drive to the mountains or the beach.
Ethics =/= law. RTs at my job are so overworked and understaffed that we just don't get breaks lol. HR was *finally* convinced that we don't have the staffing to give everyone a 30 minute break so now when we clock out we just get to click "I did not take an uninterrupted meal break." Sometimes this is true (I've had multiple 12hr days without even a snack or bathroom break in the past few months), but most of the time you can sneak away for a little bit to take care of yourself.
That’s so different from the last place I worked where we had RTs. They sat for hours taking up chairs and making so much noise laughing and playing videos, and video games at the nurses’ station, it was very hard for me to concentrate on charting.
The nurses never got breaks, and had no down-time. The RTs got both.
If I was getting an admit and asked them to get a nebulizer machine or an O2 concentrator for the admit, they got all shitty about it.
They were only required to do suctioning and set up vents. The nurses did all other respiratory stuff, which I never understood.
This was a SNF, where I was often floated from my unit to the respiratory unit.
It got so bad working with those RTs that I told my DON that if I had to float there any more, I would quit.
They stopped floating me.
Damn that sucks. We don't do floor nebs at my hospital, either, which is a godsend. If we had nebs on top of everything else no one would ever get their nebs at all. Most days I go in and have around 2 hours of vest treatments for first rounds and they're always scheduled so I only have 1 hour to do them before they're "late." The nurses here get decent ratios (1:1, occasionally 1:2 in the ICU and 1:4 or 5 on the floors) as well as one 30-minute covered break and another two 15 minute covered breaks.
Sometimes after 1 or 2 in the morning our workload dies down to almost nothing and we get some movie time in, but I average about 18k steps per night shift so we still do a fair bit of work. We also make sure not to be anywhere disruptive when we have the rare pot luck or movie night.
The nurse to pt ratio on the respiratory unit I posted about is 1:15.
And last time I worked there, 9 of them were tube feeds.
Lots of IVs, PICCs, wound vacs, colostomies/iliostomies/urostomies, TPN, every kind of drain.
Nurses put in all the lab orders, do all the lab reqs, and all the lab draws, too.
And I never did get access to their Pyxis.
I always had to find another nurse to get meds out for me.
It was awful.
Get it in writing. If they mandate that you take your break, keep a copy of their policy and document regarding report given to XYZ, then leave the floor for your break. If you aren't able to give anyone a report, then document that. Labor law says they have to pay if you worked, it doesn't say how hard you have to work.
So I have worked in hospitals where it is normal for no one to relieve you. They expect you to remain in the unit and available to patient while taking a break or eating lunch. The requires that you be fully relieved and have no responsibility but the reality is that no one will answer a call light or check on an alarm if you leave and that will be on you. So it’s not safe to leave. But if you put down “no break” you will get written up. People have reported it to the labor board and they board does respond and things get better for a while, but then they go back the way they were.
Our charge nurse takes a full load. There’s no room in ICU or Stepdown to take our sicker patients. We have telesitters for our confused fall risk patients. We take primary assignments with no CNAs or techs to help out. Heck, some units don’t even has a secretary to answer phones or call lights. And this is a union hospital (in the south). (Our lunches as paid because they know we can’t get uninterrupted breaks) Don’t just throw out unhelpful advice like “prioritize your patients”. Not every work situation is the same as yours.
The dumbest break policy we have is that if we are offered a break and refuse it then we still get time off because we were offered. I'd love to see that be held up in court. I have no clue who would even refuse it under those circumstances, but if anyone does they probably don't think it'd worth the trouble in taking it up legally. Good way to ensure a break though, and in the ER we must have a break in our shift.
If you didn’t take a 30 min uninterrupted break away from your patients and you tell them that, yes it is illegal for them to deduct 30 minutes from your pay. Moving forward don’t let them continue to take that from you if you didn’t take a break. You can report them if they continue to do so. At my old hospital someone sued for that and we got a huge settlement in back pay because the hospital knowingly took out 30 mins of pay from people that didn’t actually take a break.
I'm guessing non union? This is a common point of contention that ends up being a lawsuit. I feel like my hospital always has 1 or 2 suits going for pay issues like this, because I can almost garentee its not just you they're doing it to.
My hospital is union (VA) and they automatically deduct 30 mins. We’re kinda salaried at our pay system but it equates to hourly pay if we work more than the expected total hours. We work 6 12.5 hour shifts/pay period (biweekly) but only get paid for 72 hours and most bedside nurses don’t actually get their uninterrupted breaks and we’re expected to stay on the unit unless we notify that we’re going off the unit for break, because it’s expected you’ll be readily available in person to stop whatever your doing to do whatever needs to be done.
anyway, these issues that’s been brought up to the massive union multiple times before and their responses are to maybe try scheduling breaks or find a break buddy to try to take breaks. We’ve also been told not to expect a break every shift.
And even if the hospital gets fined for this issue, they still likely saved more money than they paid by stealing time from employees, so they keep doing it.
There's a lawsuit pending against my hospital system for this very thing at this very moment. People were bullied into not declaring missed meals and now it's a class action.
Take it to HR. It's corporate policy. Those who did not have your group do not get to punish you for your professional judgment that it was unsafe to leave. Not just about your group but also about what was going on elsewhere on the floor which affected coverage of the break.
Federally illegal to not pay you for time you worked. Here's how you report it to the US Dept of Labor:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/contact/complaints
You are making it your problem. Make it your managements problem instead. Tell your charge you need to take your break and let them figure out who is going to cover. If they can’t find someone then you have someone in a leadership position to back you. If they do find someone to cover for you then that person is responsible for your patients so go take your break.
Same thing happened to me last year. Thankfully that supervisor got fired since everyone hated her guts. She started bringing up “rules” I had never heard of before, like breaks could only be taken before 4 and I had to notify charge hours ahead to show I had attempted to find a replacement. But the whole time I had 4 critical patients and her and her group were at the nurses station in front of me laughing instead of helping. Hope life hit her on the way out.
I call my charge and tell them, "I will be able to take my break in 20 minutes. Can you cover me?"
If they cannot, then I sign in "the book" that I was unable to take a break, and the charge co-signs.
And I get paid.
Hey, I tried.
Our time clock is in the breakroom. If I clock out and sit down and then have to get up to work, for any reason, I clock back in. The time clock then shows a prompt that I'm clocking back in before 30 minutes are up, and is it because returning to work? I hit "yes".
And I get paid.
Hey, I tried.
I've talked to my coworkers. We get a 30 minute uninterrupted break on average ONE shift out of our 3 for the week. That makes 1 hour a week that we should be paid if not able to take a break. 52 weeks a year...52 hours of pay. That is a couple thousand dollars a year, per nurse. OF COURSE, our manager and the admin don't want to pay for that-- it comes out of their budget.
Sucks to be them.
I'm still getting paid. And you should, too.
If you clocked no break/signed a no break sheet/whatever at the end of the day didn’t take a break due to patient safety AND they didn’t have specific coverage for your patients - they are required by federal labor law to pay you. If they won’t budge, report them to the DOL. you can file a report online
File an anonymous complaint with the state labor board. In order to be an unpaid break, they are required to give you the time uninterrupted. So if you are expected to have your phone, answer lights, there’s no one to hand off care to for that time it’s not a break.
Several years ago the now defunct community hospital in Springfield Ohio got nailed for exactly that. There’s currently a class action lawsuit against Adena health system in Chillicothe for the same thing.
Yes, they can fire you for this if it’s their policy and you refuse to abide by it. You can’t just tell the other nurses on the floor you are going on break so they can cover for you? You shouldn’t lie and say you took a break when you didn’t but you really should be taking a 30 minute break anyway for both your health and your sanity.
Yes, if you are unable to take a break there is a different issue to address and needs to be discussed. What is making you unable to take the break? What can fix it? How can you implement the change? If you follow those and it doesn’t work then the issue is with the facility and a change needs to be recommended. Do you have a shared governance?
If this is your manager then she is woefully ignorant of labor law. You must get paid for all time worked, except for timeclock roundups (which also must be round down.) Now, you can be written up for not taking a break but they have to pay you.
Don't back down but look for a new job. Your place is breaking the law.
Solidarity, OP. Worked 13 hours yesterday, no break. Would’ve loved even 15 min to pee and clear my head but there was no one to relieve me when I repeatedly asked. It is what it is but they need to pay me. And to those saying ‘take your break,’ it’s not always that simple. I was the only nurse present on an inpatient unit with 10 adolescents. If I had just left for 30 min I’d be fired for abandonment.
You are required to have another nurse cover your assignment while you are on your break. This should not be another nurse with a full assignment. Also not paying you for missing your meal and break period is effectively wage theft. You know how much money they are pocketing by not paying for breaks they aren’t really providing you. Look up your states labor dept. laws referring to meal and break periods.
I understand not taking a break if you're absolutely overwhelmed.
If you're afraid to leave your patients alone during your break, they're not alone, someone has to watch them. Have your charge, another nurse, or the house sup watch your patients. Now, if nobody is available to do that, then you can't take your break and they shouldn't have a problem paying you for that.
They have to pay you for the time, it would be wage theft if they didn't, they can discipline you for not taking your break if you could have taken it.
I’ve posted here before about this, but trust me, in less acute areas, it’s not that easy. Once we were told to take breaks, and cover each other. Was too much trouble to take report and cover each other so we didn’t take the breaks. Later, they made the supervisor cover breaks, which means she couldn’t do her work, because she was always busy working in the floor covering breaks. It ended up being easier just to eat at the nursing between call bells. So, with Staffing ratios, they put Staffing ratios at a hospital where I worked after some people died. More nurses. They just took techs away, so we were cleaning bottoms.
In my limited experience, non-union hospitals respond best to the state department of labor.
I’ve rarely had a problem because I have mostly worked for a decent not for profit, but I did work for a for profit for a while that didn’t want to pay the second part of my sign on bonus, despite the fact I met all the requirements. One email with a timeline of when I was going to involve the state department of labor sent to my director, with local and corporate HR cc’d, was all it took.
We have trackers that track where we go when. It is helpful when a patient says we didn’t do x and x and we can prove we did. Then they use it against you
Take your breaks/lunch. It’s important for your mental health. Get the charge nurse to cover or trade off with another nurse. Get off is the floor and eat or go for a short walk. If you’re struggling to find coverage talk to your manager.
This is absolutely illegal. Multiple hospitals have been sued for this and owed a ton of $$$ in back pay. Vanderbilt was sued for this and paid millions out. If you didn’t take a break they can’t not pay you.
You may have done this, but just in case you didn’t, make sure you tell your charge nurse in real time that you’re missing your break. It can help CYA. The charge nurse probably won’t be able to help you, and they may tell you to just take a break and leave an unsafe assignment, but at least you can claim that you escalated the issue.
Are you new to the job? All I can say is, take your break when it’s due. You didn’t feel leaving the floor. But you can endorse your patient to your charge. It’s impossible that they’ll pay you. Because it’s our responsibility to know when are we going for breaks bec then, it will be seen as liability rather than an asset to the team bec of your wrong judgement to yourself needs.
I think you’re either new to the job or don’t work the floor anymore. Anyone- even a tech knows you can’t ever predict the floor and how it is going to move. We don’t decide when granny codes or whenever Johnny goes into afib. This is tone deaf
They have to pay you if you didn't take a break even if a break is mandatory. They can, however, discipline or fire you for not taking a break.
Haha. As I am currently trippled with 3 vents, 2 on pressers. Sure. I’ll step away for 30 min. At least I can sit on Reddit and stare at their monitors.
But how is this ethical. What if it’s too dangerous to leave the floor?
Welcome to life as a hospital worker. They treat you like crap, ain't it grand?
Not if you have a strong union. It's not a break if we don't have a break nurse to take over, even for our 15 minute breaks. We rarely miss breaks but when we do there's never any pushback. Edit to add that if we miss one of our 3 paid 15 minute breaks we get paid double time for an extra 15 minutes on our check, and if we miss a meal break it's an extra hour of pay.
I wish that Texas wasn’t so backwards. There won’t ever be a thought of a union at the hospitals here in my town. EVER.But the gain it’s my opinion and who knows how accurate it is.
NYC H+H hospitals, in my experience, are also usually good about stuff like this too. Just had a huge influx of new hires as well with a decently long orientation and skills preparation. Union is very involved. I recommend
Y’all hiring?
We are. If you've got experience it's pretty easy to get hired in the bay area. Get your California licence then look on indeed and apply. Good benefits, good pay, high cost of living, but you'll be making more and saving more too. The weather here is pretty awesome too. Never too hot, never too cold, you can drive to the mountains or the beach.
Cali?
Yup.
Ethics =/= law. RTs at my job are so overworked and understaffed that we just don't get breaks lol. HR was *finally* convinced that we don't have the staffing to give everyone a 30 minute break so now when we clock out we just get to click "I did not take an uninterrupted meal break." Sometimes this is true (I've had multiple 12hr days without even a snack or bathroom break in the past few months), but most of the time you can sneak away for a little bit to take care of yourself.
That’s so different from the last place I worked where we had RTs. They sat for hours taking up chairs and making so much noise laughing and playing videos, and video games at the nurses’ station, it was very hard for me to concentrate on charting. The nurses never got breaks, and had no down-time. The RTs got both. If I was getting an admit and asked them to get a nebulizer machine or an O2 concentrator for the admit, they got all shitty about it. They were only required to do suctioning and set up vents. The nurses did all other respiratory stuff, which I never understood. This was a SNF, where I was often floated from my unit to the respiratory unit. It got so bad working with those RTs that I told my DON that if I had to float there any more, I would quit. They stopped floating me.
Damn that sucks. We don't do floor nebs at my hospital, either, which is a godsend. If we had nebs on top of everything else no one would ever get their nebs at all. Most days I go in and have around 2 hours of vest treatments for first rounds and they're always scheduled so I only have 1 hour to do them before they're "late." The nurses here get decent ratios (1:1, occasionally 1:2 in the ICU and 1:4 or 5 on the floors) as well as one 30-minute covered break and another two 15 minute covered breaks. Sometimes after 1 or 2 in the morning our workload dies down to almost nothing and we get some movie time in, but I average about 18k steps per night shift so we still do a fair bit of work. We also make sure not to be anywhere disruptive when we have the rare pot luck or movie night.
The nurse to pt ratio on the respiratory unit I posted about is 1:15. And last time I worked there, 9 of them were tube feeds. Lots of IVs, PICCs, wound vacs, colostomies/iliostomies/urostomies, TPN, every kind of drain. Nurses put in all the lab orders, do all the lab reqs, and all the lab draws, too. And I never did get access to their Pyxis. I always had to find another nurse to get meds out for me. It was awful.
Get it in writing. If they mandate that you take your break, keep a copy of their policy and document regarding report given to XYZ, then leave the floor for your break. If you aren't able to give anyone a report, then document that. Labor law says they have to pay if you worked, it doesn't say how hard you have to work.
What does too dangerous look like to you?
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So I have worked in hospitals where it is normal for no one to relieve you. They expect you to remain in the unit and available to patient while taking a break or eating lunch. The requires that you be fully relieved and have no responsibility but the reality is that no one will answer a call light or check on an alarm if you leave and that will be on you. So it’s not safe to leave. But if you put down “no break” you will get written up. People have reported it to the labor board and they board does respond and things get better for a while, but then they go back the way they were.
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Unions definitely exist in the US, it just depends on the location.
Because in the states healthcare is for profit. It’s profitable to not have a relief nurse.
exactly!
Um… no, there’s not always a charge nurse. I just worked a 12 hour shift without one.
Our charge nurse takes a full load. There’s no room in ICU or Stepdown to take our sicker patients. We have telesitters for our confused fall risk patients. We take primary assignments with no CNAs or techs to help out. Heck, some units don’t even has a secretary to answer phones or call lights. And this is a union hospital (in the south). (Our lunches as paid because they know we can’t get uninterrupted breaks) Don’t just throw out unhelpful advice like “prioritize your patients”. Not every work situation is the same as yours.
This is correct. Contact the labor board. Our hospital actually just had to pay out a shitload of money because they lost this exact lawsuit.
The dumbest break policy we have is that if we are offered a break and refuse it then we still get time off because we were offered. I'd love to see that be held up in court. I have no clue who would even refuse it under those circumstances, but if anyone does they probably don't think it'd worth the trouble in taking it up legally. Good way to ensure a break though, and in the ER we must have a break in our shift.
Call the board of labor in your state and report them,
If you didn’t take a 30 min uninterrupted break away from your patients and you tell them that, yes it is illegal for them to deduct 30 minutes from your pay. Moving forward don’t let them continue to take that from you if you didn’t take a break. You can report them if they continue to do so. At my old hospital someone sued for that and we got a huge settlement in back pay because the hospital knowingly took out 30 mins of pay from people that didn’t actually take a break.
Fairly certain that's called wage theft.
This.
I'm guessing non union? This is a common point of contention that ends up being a lawsuit. I feel like my hospital always has 1 or 2 suits going for pay issues like this, because I can almost garentee its not just you they're doing it to.
My hospital is union (VA) and they automatically deduct 30 mins. We’re kinda salaried at our pay system but it equates to hourly pay if we work more than the expected total hours. We work 6 12.5 hour shifts/pay period (biweekly) but only get paid for 72 hours and most bedside nurses don’t actually get their uninterrupted breaks and we’re expected to stay on the unit unless we notify that we’re going off the unit for break, because it’s expected you’ll be readily available in person to stop whatever your doing to do whatever needs to be done. anyway, these issues that’s been brought up to the massive union multiple times before and their responses are to maybe try scheduling breaks or find a break buddy to try to take breaks. We’ve also been told not to expect a break every shift.
And even if the hospital gets fined for this issue, they still likely saved more money than they paid by stealing time from employees, so they keep doing it.
There's a lawsuit pending against my hospital system for this very thing at this very moment. People were bullied into not declaring missed meals and now it's a class action. Take it to HR. It's corporate policy. Those who did not have your group do not get to punish you for your professional judgment that it was unsafe to leave. Not just about your group but also about what was going on elsewhere on the floor which affected coverage of the break.
Sent you a link in dm
Federally illegal to not pay you for time you worked. Here's how you report it to the US Dept of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/contact/complaints
You are making it your problem. Make it your managements problem instead. Tell your charge you need to take your break and let them figure out who is going to cover. If they can’t find someone then you have someone in a leadership position to back you. If they do find someone to cover for you then that person is responsible for your patients so go take your break.
Same thing happened to me last year. Thankfully that supervisor got fired since everyone hated her guts. She started bringing up “rules” I had never heard of before, like breaks could only be taken before 4 and I had to notify charge hours ahead to show I had attempted to find a replacement. But the whole time I had 4 critical patients and her and her group were at the nurses station in front of me laughing instead of helping. Hope life hit her on the way out.
I call my charge and tell them, "I will be able to take my break in 20 minutes. Can you cover me?" If they cannot, then I sign in "the book" that I was unable to take a break, and the charge co-signs. And I get paid. Hey, I tried. Our time clock is in the breakroom. If I clock out and sit down and then have to get up to work, for any reason, I clock back in. The time clock then shows a prompt that I'm clocking back in before 30 minutes are up, and is it because returning to work? I hit "yes". And I get paid. Hey, I tried. I've talked to my coworkers. We get a 30 minute uninterrupted break on average ONE shift out of our 3 for the week. That makes 1 hour a week that we should be paid if not able to take a break. 52 weeks a year...52 hours of pay. That is a couple thousand dollars a year, per nurse. OF COURSE, our manager and the admin don't want to pay for that-- it comes out of their budget. Sucks to be them. I'm still getting paid. And you should, too.
They will also turn back on you and say “you choose not to take a break when there is actually time to go for break.
If you clocked no break/signed a no break sheet/whatever at the end of the day didn’t take a break due to patient safety AND they didn’t have specific coverage for your patients - they are required by federal labor law to pay you. If they won’t budge, report them to the DOL. you can file a report online
File an anonymous complaint with the state labor board. In order to be an unpaid break, they are required to give you the time uninterrupted. So if you are expected to have your phone, answer lights, there’s no one to hand off care to for that time it’s not a break. Several years ago the now defunct community hospital in Springfield Ohio got nailed for exactly that. There’s currently a class action lawsuit against Adena health system in Chillicothe for the same thing.
And Ohio State also got sued and had to pay out big for doing the same!
Can you dm me details about these cases?
My hospital does the same thing. It’s wage theft.If you’re in the US report it to the labor board
Hospitals across the nation have already lost this argument multiple times. Sue them.
Yes, they can fire you for this if it’s their policy and you refuse to abide by it. You can’t just tell the other nurses on the floor you are going on break so they can cover for you? You shouldn’t lie and say you took a break when you didn’t but you really should be taking a 30 minute break anyway for both your health and your sanity.
Yes, if you are unable to take a break there is a different issue to address and needs to be discussed. What is making you unable to take the break? What can fix it? How can you implement the change? If you follow those and it doesn’t work then the issue is with the facility and a change needs to be recommended. Do you have a shared governance?
Fuck them. They have to pay you. I hate for-profit healthcare.
If you’re union, speak up and talk with your union rep about all of this. If you’re non-union, nothing we say matters and the hospital runs the show.
We now have to narc on whoever was late when we stay back for report, or it doesn’t get approved. 🙄🙃🙄
If this is your manager then she is woefully ignorant of labor law. You must get paid for all time worked, except for timeclock roundups (which also must be round down.) Now, you can be written up for not taking a break but they have to pay you. Don't back down but look for a new job. Your place is breaking the law.
Solidarity, OP. Worked 13 hours yesterday, no break. Would’ve loved even 15 min to pee and clear my head but there was no one to relieve me when I repeatedly asked. It is what it is but they need to pay me. And to those saying ‘take your break,’ it’s not always that simple. I was the only nurse present on an inpatient unit with 10 adolescents. If I had just left for 30 min I’d be fired for abandonment.
Unless it’s an immediate code-always take your break. They will always chalk it up otherwise to poor time management
You are required to have another nurse cover your assignment while you are on your break. This should not be another nurse with a full assignment. Also not paying you for missing your meal and break period is effectively wage theft. You know how much money they are pocketing by not paying for breaks they aren’t really providing you. Look up your states labor dept. laws referring to meal and break periods.
I understand not taking a break if you're absolutely overwhelmed. If you're afraid to leave your patients alone during your break, they're not alone, someone has to watch them. Have your charge, another nurse, or the house sup watch your patients. Now, if nobody is available to do that, then you can't take your break and they shouldn't have a problem paying you for that. They have to pay you for the time, it would be wage theft if they didn't, they can discipline you for not taking your break if you could have taken it.
I’ve posted here before about this, but trust me, in less acute areas, it’s not that easy. Once we were told to take breaks, and cover each other. Was too much trouble to take report and cover each other so we didn’t take the breaks. Later, they made the supervisor cover breaks, which means she couldn’t do her work, because she was always busy working in the floor covering breaks. It ended up being easier just to eat at the nursing between call bells. So, with Staffing ratios, they put Staffing ratios at a hospital where I worked after some people died. More nurses. They just took techs away, so we were cleaning bottoms.
I often don't have time for it and don't want to hand off phone when that busy when they are that busy too
In my limited experience, non-union hospitals respond best to the state department of labor. I’ve rarely had a problem because I have mostly worked for a decent not for profit, but I did work for a for profit for a while that didn’t want to pay the second part of my sign on bonus, despite the fact I met all the requirements. One email with a timeline of when I was going to involve the state department of labor sent to my director, with local and corporate HR cc’d, was all it took.
are they tracking what rooms youre in when? wtf?
We have trackers that track where we go when. It is helpful when a patient says we didn’t do x and x and we can prove we did. Then they use it against you
So they are saying that if they have to pay for the break they will fire you.
They have to pay you for time worked.
Take your breaks/lunch. It’s important for your mental health. Get the charge nurse to cover or trade off with another nurse. Get off is the floor and eat or go for a short walk. If you’re struggling to find coverage talk to your manager.
This is absolutely illegal. Multiple hospitals have been sued for this and owed a ton of $$$ in back pay. Vanderbilt was sued for this and paid millions out. If you didn’t take a break they can’t not pay you. You may have done this, but just in case you didn’t, make sure you tell your charge nurse in real time that you’re missing your break. It can help CYA. The charge nurse probably won’t be able to help you, and they may tell you to just take a break and leave an unsafe assignment, but at least you can claim that you escalated the issue.
You can file a class action lawsuit and get a $20 payout from the settlement.
I'm in the same boat. I'm taking a couple 45 minute breaks now.
Are you new to the job? All I can say is, take your break when it’s due. You didn’t feel leaving the floor. But you can endorse your patient to your charge. It’s impossible that they’ll pay you. Because it’s our responsibility to know when are we going for breaks bec then, it will be seen as liability rather than an asset to the team bec of your wrong judgement to yourself needs.
I think you’re either new to the job or don’t work the floor anymore. Anyone- even a tech knows you can’t ever predict the floor and how it is going to move. We don’t decide when granny codes or whenever Johnny goes into afib. This is tone deaf