While the current regulations of the City of Buenos Aires state that a nurse can work up to seven hours per day, six if engaged in intensive-care, the General Auditor of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) found cases of professionals who provided 12 hours of service during 2010 and 2011.

According to a report by the City watchdog, this much over time started with the implementation of extra hours they called "modules", which was implemented in 2006 as an exceptional measure to alleviate the nursing shortages in most hospitals in the City Capital.

The investigation revealed that the City allows a limit of 20 modules per month to each nurse, and a module is equivalent to six hours. Therefore, adding these additional hours to a typical day, the professionals ended up being on duty 12 hours per day.

Although AGCBA did not specify as to how many nurses are in fact affected by this situation, the report itself contained a figure that would risk a ratio: the number of modules approved by the City between 2010 and 2011 represents almost 50% of the staff at the centers of health.

In other words, it is as if during that period 50% more professionals had worked, or equivalent to half of the nurses having completed 12-hour shifts in a daily manner.

The Costs

The audit also notes that the long working hours cause health risks for nurses. In fact, the report says that after seeing every hospital in the City 370 cases of professionals with "long treatment diseases" were found. And that 40% of the 370 presented problems related to "musculoskeletal, mental, and behavioral disorders."

In addition, the report noted the "lack of control by the Ministry of Health and effectors (hospitals) of the monitoring of the personnel’s long illness treatments."

Without Any Strategic Planning

Beyond the time overhead for professionals, the report concludes that "there is no strategic plan from the Nursing Management Operations (an office that works for the Human Resources of the Ministry of Health), which allows to planning ahead replacements” for the retirees.

Also, the AGCBA states that "replacement procedures are performed for each effector independently" and that "the lack of planning increases the risk of improperly assigning resources."

And To Top It All Off, How Many Are There?

The audit found that if someone compared the data obtained from the Ministry of Health with the, before mentioned, Management Operations they wouldn’t know exactly how many nurses currently work in the City of Buenos Aires.  According to the health portfolio, up until December 31st 2011 there were 8,137 nurses on staff. However, on that same exact date the Nursing Management Operations said there were 6,124 hired nurses.

Designations

Furthermore, the watchdog analyzed eight nursing records for six local hospitals. The main goal was to find out how much time it took since the completion of the paperwork to the actual hiring of the professionals. 
It was found, for example, that in 2010 the proceedings were delayed by 281 days (an example would be the Fernandez Hospital) and 400 days (Zubizarreta Hospital). This barely changed in 2011: the appointments took a minimum of 178 days (Ramos Mejia Hospital) and a maximum of 335 days (Fernandez again).