The worsening shortage of nurses is a crisis of “devastating” proportions, says Rebecca M. Patton, president of the American Nurses Association.

But it has also done some good, Patton says, by forcing a discussion of the issues surrounding nurses’ lives and working conditions.

Patton was in Rhode Island yesterday to celebrate National Nurses Day by pushing the nurses’ legislative agenda in the General Assembly. At the top of the agenda is a bill that would ban mandatory overtime for nurses. The bill has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

Mandatory overtime, Patton said in an interview, “is part of the reason we have a shortage” because it discourages nurses from staying in the profession.

“When nurses work overtime, the fatigue factor contributes to errors,” and nurses are held responsible for those mistakes, she said. “I know of nurses that fell asleep at the wheel and crashed” after an overtime shift, Patton said.

Patton urges hospitals and policymakers to consider the issues underlying the need for overtime. When a nurse calls in sick, is it because she is afraid of being mandated to stay past her shift? Did she fall ill from overwork? Was she injured on the job?

Patton said that a recent study analyzing the tasks performed by nurses found that in a typical eight-hour shift, a nurse moves, lifts or pushes 1.8 tons. A third of registered nurses suffer neuromuscular injuries, Patton said, and of them, 12 percent will leave the profession as a result.

Then, the process of recruiting and training a replacement can cost a hospital $75,000. At the same time, hospitals are spending millions of dollars filling vacancies with traveling nurses hired through agencies.

What if some of that money, Patton asked, was used to improve working conditions so nurses wouldn’t leave in the first place?

Hospitals that have earned “Magnet” designation from the American Nurses Association, by meeting standards of nursing excellence, reap financial benefits, according to Patton. (In Rhode Island, Miriam and Newport hospitals have Magnet designation.) They sometimes see their bond ratings go up and their malpractice premiums go down, because studies have shown a connection between quality nursing and error reduction. Magnet hospitals also have fewer vacancies and slower turnover.

Another key factor in the nursing shortage is a logjam in training them, because of a shortage of nursing faculty. Many nursing schools pay their faculty less money than starting nurses, while requiring advanced degrees.

Nursing schools around the nation have turned away 147,000 qualified applicants, Patton said. Meanwhile, the federal government estimates that by 2010, the nation will be short 400,000 nurses.

ffreyer@projo.com