Introduction
Registered nurses occupy one of the largest groups of health care providers. Registered nurses are health care clinicians who are required to have a minimum of an Associate Degree plus a passing grade on NCLEX-RN examination as required by New York Law. Most hospitals are demanding that all Registered Nurses with an Associate Degree to obtain a Bachelor of Science Degree in order to practice their Registered Nurse license. Most hospitals will provide financial help to receive a Bachelor Degree in Nursing within a time frame of 10 years. Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing is focused on leadership which will help Registered Nurses to have a better judgment when being in charge and running a Nursing Unit. Having knowledge in leadership
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Weight gain, fatigue, increase in needle sticks, a disruptive circadian cycle, obesity and increase in medication usage have been linked to nurses working shift work hours. Research has shown that quality of patient care, medication errors, poor patient satisfaction, accidents and deaths have been linked with nurses during shift work hours (Han, Trinkoff, & Geiger-Brown (2014).
Purpose of the Study The purpose of this survey study is to test the theory that shift work affects nurses negatively. A cross sectional design will be implemented using a qualitative study. A questionnaire survey will be presented to gather data. The dependent variable will consist of a cumulative scale measuring negative impacts on the individual nurse from shift work. The dependent variable will be the measure of shift work disorder. Four independent variables will be examined. They include age, experience vs. no experience, mandated vs. choice and napping. A percentage will be calculated based on the sample size for each category.
The intent of this research is study the impact of shift work on the health and safety of nurses. It will examine the factors associated with a differential impact of shift work.
Questions to be Answered (or research
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Are naps allowed in the facility during break time?
3. Does experience impact nurses’ reaction to shift work?
4. Is mandatory shift work a risk factor in developing shift work disorders?
Assumptions
The researcher assumes that shift work leads to nursing fatigue and multiple health issues. Shift work in nursing will eventually lead to an increase in medication errors and needle stick injuries. Researcher also assumes that lack of sleep will affect nurses’ well- being and decrease patient satisfaction. The researcher came to this assumptions based on the multiple research studies performed on shift work and the negative findings found related to shift work.
The researcher assumes that the respondents will be at least 20 years of age. Additionally, the researcher assumes that the respondents will be able to read and write English. The researcher will assume that the respondents will answer all survey questions and that the questions will be answered honestly. The researcher will assure the respondents that the survey will be handled anonymously and that it will be confidential.
Theoretical framework This study will follow the biological and physiological needs in the Maslow’s
The negative impacts of shift work on workers’ health such as fatigue and sleep which are the main complain among the staff, job performance, psychosocial well-being, and job dissatisfaction have been
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).
Moreover, most shifts run into each other with day shifts extending into the night and night shifts extending into the day. This means that their circadian rhythms are distorted. Extended shift work for nurses eventually lead to them finding it difficult to adapt to normal life or any activities outside work.
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
For some nurses, mandatory overtime can be an advantage due to financial instability but mostly mandatory overtime can cause fatigue, burnout, injuries, errors, inadequate sleep and deficits in performance. According to research working long hours which consists more than 40 hours a week or over 12 hours a day leads to an increased medication errors and patient mortality. The probability of making medication errors increases tremendously when nurses work longer than 12.5 hours a day. During surveys regarding reasons of overtime, 60 % of nurses stated that overtime was obligatory as part of their job, 29 % of nurses stated that they volunteered and 41% of nurses stated that they were “on call hours” (Bae, 2012)
First, baseline data were collected on nurse perceptions about the shift report process and patient perceptions about nursing care were. The authors adopted the ‘Patient Views on Nursing Care’ patient survey tool (Larrabee et al. 1995) to perform the survey. Then same data were collected and analyzed three months and 13 months after the new approach was implemented. The data analysis approach included analysis of variance(ANOVA) to compare data collected during the baseline survey and data collected after the new approach was implemented.
Nurse staffing have an effect on a variety of areas within nursing. Quality of care is usually affected. Hospitals with low staffing tend to have higher incidence of poor patient outcomes. Martin, (2015) wrote an article on how insufficient nursing staff increases workload and job dissatisfaction, which in effect decreases total patient care over all. When nurse staffing is inadequate, the ability to practice ethically becomes questionable. Time worked, overtime, and total hours per week have significant effect on errors. When nurses works long hours, the more likely errors will be made. He also argued that inadequate staffing not only affects their patients but also their loved ones, future and current nursing staff, and the hospitals in which they are employed. An unrealistic workload may result in chronic fatigue, poor sleep patterns, and absenteeism thus affecting the patients they take care of.
Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning
Change of shift is a busy time at the hospital. Nurses and techs who have cared for patients on the outgoing shift meet with those who will care for the patients for the next shift and give updates. This communication is often done as a meeting in a room or area that is away from the patients. Much thought has been given to implementing bedside nursing shift reports as a way to improve nursing satisfaction, reduce patient falls, and reduce medication errors. Although this method has been researched and reported in previous papers, those papers seemed lacking in data on sample sizes and rarely calculated statistical significance of the study results. The article used as a basis for this paper addressed these deficits seen in previous papers
A nurse’s typical day isn’t without stress; it is usually a lot of complex planning, critical thinking, time management, an abundance of communications with all departments of the hospital, and documenting events that have happened throughout the day on their entire patient assignment. “Nurses who are mandated following the completion of their regular shift are often ill-equipped to continue working. They have not planned for that situation with: proper advanced rest, arrangements for
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
Limited attention has been paid to the hours worked by nurses, or the effects of these hours on patient safety (Rogers, 2008). Even though most nurses favor 12- hour shifts and overtime, it is associated with difficulties staying awake during times of duty, reduced sleep times, and triple the risk of making an error (Rogers, 2008). The most significant risk of making an error occurred when nurses were scheduled to work 12.5 hours or more.
Nurses are one of the few professional groups who have to work in shift during their careers. Work shift implies either long-term night work or work involving rotation between day, evening, and night shifts. Work shifts affect a nurse’s health and performance of disruption of the circadian rhythm. This may result in sleep disturbances, fatigue, and impaired work performance and safety awarness15. In Australia, for example, there were 3.6 million medical consultations and 2.9 million prescriptions for back pain during 1993/199416; while in the United States, expenditures incurred by individuals with back pain reached 90.7 billion U.S. dollars in 199817. The direct costs of LBP in UK, USA, and Australia represent between 0.19 and 0.42 of Gross
Nursing is a profession that is known for requiring staff to work nights, weekends, and holidays. This is a duty that most nurses are aware of prior to going into the field, however, they may not be fully aware of the impact these varied shifts have on personal health and performance. These types of fluctuating work hours are often referred to as shift work, which is defined by Berger and Hobbs (2006) as shifts taking place aside from the traditional daytime hours (p. 465). Typical hospital shifts outside of the day shift are usually classified as evening shift or night shift. Some nurses may work permanent days or nights; however, it is more common for nurses to find themselves rotating between the two shifts. Studies have shown that shift
In the second study conducted. A sample of 502 nurses that worked 12.5-hour shifts was used and the findings showed that 67% of the nurses had two times more medical errors than the nurses that worked a regular 8-hour shift (Stimpfel, Sloane, Aiken 2504)