Overview
Nurses’ shifts are often fast-paced, hectic, and stressful. The workload, demands on time, and desire to provide excellent patient care sometimes make it impossible for nurses to take a meal break. Uninterrupted 30 minute meal breaks are essential for patient care and are also required by law.
Taking uninterrupted meal breaks is essential to the health and well-being of nurses. In her article “One-Hour, Off-Unit Meal Breaks”, Amanda Stefancyk discussed the many benefits to nurses who were encouraged to take their full meal breaks away from their units at Massachusetts General Hospital. The nurses there “reported feeling refreshed and less fatigued, enjoying increased teamwork and familiarity with their colleagues, and having improved time-management skills.”1
Across the country, more hospitals are studying the effects of deficient meal breaks on nurses. Occupational health nurses are sometimes involved in an effort to ensure that nurses have scheduled breaks and are allowed to take them.
Wisconsin law protects nurses and employees in other occupations from interruptions during their unpaid meal periods, helping to ensure truly restful breaks. The law requires that employers pay nurses who are not able to take a full, uninterrupted 30 minute meal period. In fact, under Wisconsin law, any meal period under 30 minutes must be paid.
Nurses who cannot leave their place of employment must also be paid for their 30 minute meal period, regardless of whether it was interrupted. Nurses perform very important work, and they universally take pride in their vocation. A trait common to all nurses is taking care of the needs of others before their own. That selflessness does not mean that nurses are not protected by the same federal and state wage and hours laws as everyone else. Nurses must be paid for work the same as any other professional.
Co-written by Attorneys Jason Knutson of Habush Habush & Rottier and William Parsons of Hawks Quindel, S.C.
1.One‐Hour, Off‐Unit Meal Breaks, Stefancyk, Amanda L. MSN, MBA, RN; AJN, American Journal of Nursing: January 2009 – Volume 109 – Issue 1 – p 64–66;http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/fulltext/2009/01000/one_hour,_off_unit_meal_breaks.32.aspx