Impact of 12 Hour Nursing Shift

Nevertheless, the universal shift-work structure divided a whole day into two twelve-hour or eight-hour shifts. This prompts the staff to be adapted to the different types of shift work structures. When bearing in mind the negative effects of 12-hour shifts on nurses, fatigue, sleepiness and nurse’s health are among the most prevalent complaints among nurses. Lack of psychosocial wellness, job performances and work dissatisfaction has further been reported in the different studies as some of the most common effects of 12-hour nursing shifts. Community-based research on exhaustion illustrates the commonness of fatigue in basic care studies, which is illustrated as tiredness and loss of energy among nurses which ranged from 10% to 45%. Even though literature illustrates studies that are relevant with diverse methods, the results indicate similar conclusions.

It has therefore been established that lack of enough sleep has an effect on work performance, mood, cognitive skills, safety and motivation. Additionally, irritability and depression essentially increases, as well as stressful feelings when nurses had low hours of sleep. Another body of literature asserts that lack of sleep is associated with challenges in appetite and metabolism challenges, thus increasing the danger of obesity. Nevertheless, whereas systematic evaluations have been carried out to study the effect of working hours on wellness, it can be noticed that there is no review that has scrutinized the effect of 12-hour shifts as compared to 8-hour shifts on the well-being and health of nurses as well as their job-satisfaction. The researchers made use of Japanese scale in formulating the questionnaire thus enabling them conduct an evaluation of psychological load on the basis of Subjective Fatigue Symptoms.

The research had two distinct types of shift structures; 8-hour and 12-hour day shifts. The results that were obtained from this study illustrated that the total activity reduced among nurses who worked for 12-hour shifts in the cardiology section. On the other hand, the results obtained from this research indicated that activity increased for employees working 8-hour shifts in the cardiology and surgical sections. According to a research that was carried out by Estryn-Behara and Van der heijden (2012) which sought to scrutinize the effect of work shifts which were extended on the fatigue level of workers and health in European countries. There were 99 units which were evaluated, with most of the nurses who worked in 8-hour shifts being many while few of them worked in the 12-hour shift.

The results of the study indicated that those nurses who worked in 12-hour shifts felt more satisfied with their work and also underwent more instances of emotional exhaustion as compared to those who worked in 8-hour shifts. Additionally, the nurses who worked in the 12-hour shifts had ten times more satisfaction with their work schedules. Putting into consideration the shifts which were missing, the results of this study illustrated that nurses who worked in 8-hour shifts had less missing shifts as compared to those who worked in 12-hour shifts. As a result, the study concluded that most nurses were not satisfied working in 8-hour shifts as compared to 12-hour shifts. Work-schedule characteristics and reported musculoskeletal disorders of registered nurses. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health.