Trends and costs of overtime among nurses in Canada

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.

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.

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.

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.