Healthcare Profession Work Rotating Shifts In Health Care

West, Ahern, Byrnes and Kwanten (2007) indicate that the new graduate nurses may have not worked full-time in the past; given that graduate nurses begin their career with a full-time job can lead to exhaustion. It was discovered that shift work leads to desynchronisation of physiologically determined circadian rhythms which has a major psychobiology effect and it is commonly perceived the effects of shift work contribute to graduate nurses attrition rate. The NGNs often have a high level of stress due to disturbed sleeping patterns, as they find to adaption to shift work or rotating work hours difficult. Eventually, it leads to feelings of lack of job satisfaction, exhaustion and spending of less time with their friends and family, which can eventually could lead to burnout (West et al., 2007).

With regard to sleepiness, several studies indicated that the average of sleep duration in 1910 to 2002 have decreased from 9 to 6 hours on workdays (National sleep foundation, 2002; Groger et al., 2004). Recently, a survey study of Roger et al. (2004) shows that an American Nurses have an average of 84 minutes more sleep on non workdays. Thus, shift work suggested as a cause of sleeping disorder among nurses where they feel of sleep during the shift. Considering the contributing factors of sleepiness, the literature identified that long working hours and rotating shifts are causing sleeping disorder. In the night and rotating shifts, the nurses are rarely obtained adequate amount of sleep. In fact, the nurses experiencing less sleeping hours (1 to 4 hour) than normal sleeping (Zeisler et al.,1980). Nevertheless, insufficient sleep is a significant reason of damaging planning, decision-making, and integration of information (Krueger, 1994; Harrison and Horne, 2000). More recent studies have revealed that long hour shifts and overtime are strongly linked to the difficulties of being a wake through the shift which leads to increase the risk of making an error (Scott et al., 2006; Roger et al., 2004).

Throughout the years there has been more attention directed towards healthcare worker fatigue. More specifically, fatigue associated among night-shift nurses. The Joint Commission has found that lack of sleep from night shifts has contributed to increased errors, leading to poor patient outcomes (Gardner, Dubeck, 2016).

1. Healthcare professionals often work rotating shifts. In your own words, why is this problematic? What are the psychological, social, and physiological challenges related to rotating shifts? Consider sleep deprivation, high levels of stress, or side effects from medication in your response.

Different medical organizations thought shorter shifts would improve patient care, but the shorter shifts have not improved patient care at all. Patient care hasn’t improved, because the short shifts mean doctors must be switched more often. As a result, errors often occur when one doctor’s shift is over and another doctor’s shift begins, because the doctor who knows what is going on in the particular case is leaving, so the new doctor may not know enough about the case to provide quality care for the patient. The longer shifts avoided these errors with abrupt transitions, because one doctor could stay longer and continue to care for the patient. Overall, longer shifts are better for patient care, because as long as the doctor can still work effectively, having the doctor stay at the hospital provides better quality care to patients, as the doctor who is caring for the patient knows what is going on, and they provide more continuity of care, which results in higher quality

Patients in a hospital and/or healthcare facilities have to be cared for all day and all night, everyday of the week by nurses. The usual way to fulfill this need is to divide up the day into three 8-hour shifts. Different shifts have been put into place to help improve nurse satisfaction, decrease the nursing shortage and save the hospital money. The 24-hour day is made up of two 12-hour shifts; 12 hours in the day and 12 hours at night. There has been quite an ongoing debate over the years regarding this issue of nurses working over 8 hours in a single day. Many people, such as hospital nursing administrators, have reason to believe that working long hour shifts causes more errors in

Residents should not work 24-hour shifts because it makes operations dangerous. This danger that can happen in a operation can end up harming the patient or the resident. As, Ladouceur describes in the article “...Dr Marie-Renee B Lajoie, a practicing family physician, argues against them.” The author describes that in the debate there is a lot debating over residents working 24-hour shifts. As B- Lajoie pointed out about the problem of residents working 24-hour shifts on page 1 is that “...residents make 36% more serious medical mistakes…” This statistic/quote shows that residents working 24-hour shifts have a higher chance of making a medical mistake. This is caused by the residents being sleep-deprived. The sleep deprivation

Doctors are always talking about the importance of sleep, but now first year doctors will start working 24 hour straight shifts. In Gina Kolata and Jan Hoffman’s “New Guideline Will Allow First-Year Doctors To Work 24-Hour Shifts” they explain how First year doctors will now be able to work 24 hour shifts. That is 8 eight hours more than the usual limit of 16 hours. They are also only allowed to work 80 hours a week. This new guideline sounds dangerous and might cause more accidents that could of been prevented with just a little sleep.

To provide high-quality care for the patient it is essential for the nursing staff to have enough time for recovery from long hours of demanding work. Eight-hour shifts for hospital nurses have become a standard of the past. Nowadays, 12-hour shifts for three days a week have become typical in most hospitals as recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (Stimpfel, Sloane & Aiken, 2012). The length of the shifts and the working days; however, are often unpredictable due to increased demand for patient care and high census episodes. Nursing shortages, along with a weak economy, have left hospital nurses with no choice, then to work extended hours and overtime. Long hour shifts, as well as mandatory overtime, has become an increasing

The effects of long work hours, resulting in insufficient sleep have been well documented (Rogers, 2008). Insufficient sleep alone has been noted to cause cognitive problems, mood alterations, reduced job performance, reduced motivation, increased safety risks, and physiological changes (Rogers, 2008). Failure to obtain a sufficient amount of sleep is even an important contributor to medical errors (Rogers, 2008). Now think of the effects of sleep, and add in stressful work environments, short-staffing, pressure from administration, and unexpected events, we can begin to realize how patient outcomes may be greatly compromised.

There might be many factors that contribute to noise such as the nursing activities and conversation especially during shift change, increase in visitors and patients, technology such as computer, cell phones, and television, old equipment, non-clinical events, and external environment. I believe these root causes can be prioritized depending on the impacts they have on patients. Since the medical center is a teaching hospital, I suspect that numbers of residents, researchers, and visitors during the night can be root cause of the problem. In addition, beeping monitors, television volume, open doors, noisy linen cart, and conversation between staff during shift change can be the contributing factors.

The first topic focused on in an article by Stimpfel et al. (2012) looked at the effect of longer shifts on nurses. Compared to the past, nurses are working twelve-hour shifts, instead of eight-hour shifts. The reason for these changes in shift lengths is for it to allow for nurses to have more flexibility in their schedules and to give them more time at home. This study revealed that the hours actually worked by nurses are unpredictable. Due to the fluctuations of patient needs and unanticipated staffing on the unit, leads to nurses having to work over their scheduled time (Stimpfel et al. 2012). This study also pointed out that there are no national policies for nurses that dictate the maximum number of hours a nurse can work. Nurses often end up working several hours over their shift because they feel forced into working those hours and thereby leading to burnout.

It is my opinion that shift work is another potential hazard to me as an employee in the Healthcare Industry. It is my belief that employees on nightshift work or those working irregular hours may be more susceptible to errors and accidents, mainly due to fatigue or

 The goal is to avoid, "clocks on collision," and to allow internal clocks to match external clocks, this is why night shifts are often on weekly rotation.

The term ‘Shift work’ is usually referred to uniformly divided allocations of the day in which individuals participate alternatively to provide twenty four hour coverage. A shift in sleep schedule conflicts with the body’s natural clock also known as the circadian rhythm into interpreting the time as ‘inappropriate’ and disrupts the homeostatic regulation cycle resulting in poor health outcomes. Fortunately, it is deemed possible to counter unfavourable effects of alternating insomnia and sleepiness through certain practices.