title: Trends and costs of overtime among nurses in Canada.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the regular and overtime working hours of Registered Nurses in acute care and their associated costs by employment status (full time, part time, casual) and department over a 4-year period.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data were extracted for 2005-2008 from one health region's payroll database for Registered Nurses in acute care in British Columbia, Canada. Regular and overtime hours by employment status and department were plotted over time and tested using simple linear regression. Regular and overtime wage costs were calculated at the individual level using the employee's wage rate and stratified by year, gender, age, employment status and department.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Full time Registered Nurses are working an increasing amount of overtime hours each year. Full time nurses in Emergency, Intensive Care and General Medical departments are working the highest proportion of overtime hours per total hours and consequently, contributing the highest proportion of overtime costs.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Efforts to lighten the burden of overtime should be focused at the department level. Creating more full time positions out of overtime hours may be one solution to alleviate this burden of overtime and to assuage the nursing shortage in Canada.
authors.affiliation: Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare, 1195 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC, Canada. sharlad@ohsah.bc.ca
authors.forename: Sharla
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Drebit
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ngan
authors.forename: Mande
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hay
authors.forename: Hasanat
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Alamgir
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001955:British Columbia; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009740:Nursing Staff / Q000191:economics*; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling / Q000639:trends*; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D016526:Workload / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*