Residents Working 24-Hour Analysis

For this assignment I am going to choose two different job roles and investigate the health care sector. The job roles I have chosen are midwifery and mental health worker. For each job role I am going to explain the following requirements:

A major issue in the medical career field is the demand for nurses and this, of course, means that these nurses will be working strenuous hours to meet the high demands. While this may satisfy some issues it also creates others. Longer hours results in exhausted nurses and this leads to negative patient outcomes.

Whether or not mandatory overtime is required varies from facility to facility. Like many other issues, there are both pros and cons to this topic. Witkoski,S, Sloane, D, and Aiken L (2012) did a study and concluded that nurses who worked 10 or more hours a shift were more likely to experience burnout and were dissatisfied with their jobs with an intent on quitting. Burnout can affect the quality of care a nurse provides to patients. Burnout can be the cause of a nurse not noticing subtle changes of patients which could potentially lead to patient neglect. Although there are cons to working long shifts there are some pros. When nurses work 12hour shifts, they often meet or exceed their weekly hours over the course of a 3day work week. Since they would only be working a three-day work week, it provides nurses with a better work-life balance and flexibility (Witkoski,S, Sloane, D, and Aiken L 2012), giving nurses more time outside of their job to do whatever they would like. Getting this kind of flexibility is great for nurses like myself who are either back in school or have families to take care of, or just need a little more time to recover and

In the nursing profession, especially when working in a hospital, it is not uncommon to have 12-hour nursing shifts,

In the past two decades, a lot of changes have been characterised in the healthcare working systems. One of these changes has been the assimilation of shift work systems and the flexibility in work schedules. The need for 24 hour care makes the healthcare professions to work with different shift systems such as 12 h, 8 h, 9 h or 10 hour shifts. However, the common shift work systems divide a 24-h day in two (12-h) or three (8-h) shifts. Nonetheless, this requires the staff to be adapted with the various forms of shift work schedules.

It is problematic that healthcare professions work rotating shifts because this impedes on the ability of the human body to function properly. Rotating shifts means that everyday their shifts are at different times and different lengths of time. The human body needs to be in line with the environment and when the sun is up the body naturally is awake and alert and during night time the body goes dormant to sleep, this is called circadian rhythm. The body has a circadian clock and when this is disrupted this can lead to depression and anxiety. This can lead to exhaustion and irritation that can cause someone to make mistakes. This can also lead to sleep debt and cause insomnia that can affect the mental alertness. Sleep allows the body to fight

According to the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act, requiring nurses to work overtime would be “strictly limited” (ANA, 2005). This bill has been proposed in response to the nursing shortage within the United States. This is imperative to maintaining the quality of nursing care and patient safety that we provide to our patients. The bill proposes that nurses and licensed practical nurses should not be forced to work overtime, or receive retaliation/discrimination due to refusal (ANA, 2005). In addition, the bill proposes that more studies be done to learn the

Health care professionals are need all day long that’s why this in this profession people world rotating shifts. Those shifts are usually 6-14, 14-22 and 22-6 am. So we are seeing 3 different patterns in rotating shift which means that we are also seeing 3 rotating on sleeping patterns.

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

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

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)

To begin with, nurses must work long hours at a time. Nurses, RN’s, must work long hours. They would have to work long shifts, weekends, nights, and holidays, if possible. The RN 's can only get around the long hours by working for a private company. One of my friends is a nurse, she works at St. Lucie Medical Center on the night shift. However, because she works nights she feels like she is not a real person, like her life is consumed with sleeping. So, she has decided to switch her hours to the day shift instead of the night shift. If one nurse feels like she was not a real person, then many other people must feel that way too. Another story about my friend, she just finished working a thirteen-hour night shift. She did not get much

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.