A new study finds that state-mandated caps on working hours encourage nurses to avoid working overtime, thereby reducing the risk of fatigue, and minimizing the risk of errors. According to the study which was conducted as part of the RN Work Project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the caps on working hours for nurses, have reduced overtime hours for newly registered nurses, and has confirmed that long working hours can indeed increase the risk of fatigue and risk of medical errors.

The study is part of a ten-year longitudinal study that kicked off in 2006. The purpose of the study was to learn more about career patterns of registered nurses, including their turnover rates in hospitals. The data came from nurses in 34 states, and the results of the study have been published in the Nursing Outlook.

The study focused on 16 states which have rules that restrict the number of overtime hours that nurses can work as of 2010. Arizona does not yet have rules that restrict the number of overtime hours for nurses. In those states that have such restrictions in place, the researchers found that 59% of the nurses were less likely to work mandatory overtime than nurses in states that do not have such regulations in place.

In addition, nurses who were working in states which had regulations on the number of hours that nurses can work, worked an average of 15 minutes less a week than those nurses in states that do not have such regulations in place. Earlier, Arizona medical malpractice lawyers had feared that limiting the number of work hours for registered nurses could increase voluntary overtime, but that does not seem to have happened.

Under the Medicare program, hospitals are required to track medical errors, and report adverse patient events. However, a new study finds that only one out of every 7 errors that occur in a hospital are recognized and reported.

According to the study by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, most medical errors are probably going unreported. The study found that while almost all hospitals have some type of system in place for employees to track medical errors, and inform hospital managers of serious errors, hospital staff members too often fail to report serious errors that harm Medicare patients.

In fact, according to the report, many of these errors resulted in adverse events that were so serious that the person ultimately died. These adverse events that were not reported included medication errors, bed sores, excessive bleeding from improper use of blood thinners and excessive overdose of painkillers, leading to delirium. According to the inspector general's report, more than 130,000 Medicare patients were exposed to one or more adverse events in a hospital in a single month.

None of this is very surprising to Arizona medical malpractice lawyers. Since the Institute of Medicine issued its path-breaking patient safety report To Err is Human in 1999, hospitals have found it hard to encourage employees to come forward to report errors. Initially, the problem seemed to be an unwillingness to admit mistakes because of the fear of repercussions. That seems to no longer be the case. Now, the failure to report errors seems to stem from the inability to recognize what constitutes errors serious enough to cause patient harm. In other words, staff members don't seem to be able to recognize the kind of errors that can seriously lead to patient harm and the need to report these errors.