When on a travel nursing assignment, do you ever feel a little less energetic than normal? If so, the solution may be in length of time between your shifts.
Recently, researchers in Finland set out to identify the effects of shift work on nurses. Frequency of nursing shift work across Europe as well as the negative effects of these patterns prompted the researchers’ original interest.
According to the study, shift work is a serious risk factor that contributes to occupational health problems such as breast cancer, cardiovascular diseases, mental problems and occupational injuries. Shift work also affects sleep and alertness due to irregular working hours.
Study overview
Over the course of a year, the scientists studied work shift patterns of female nurses. They analyzed the nurses in two work situations. The first situation was the nurses’ original work shift, where their shifts were scheduled less than 11 hours apart (between the end of one shift and the start of the next shift). Next, researchers studied the same nurses after they had worked a new shift schedule for a year. The new schedule had fewer amounts of short breaks between work shifts. Specifically, the nurses experienced half the amount of short intervals as they had in their old schedule, according to a press release by the University of Eastern Finland.
The scientists found the new shift schedule had a positive effect on the nurses’ health and the greatest improvement was quality of sleep. The nurses’ sleep improvement was a result of less stress and the body’s ability to better transition from work to relaxation.
These results indicate that nurses work better and are healthier overall when they have more time between shifts, according to the study.
Best types of shifts
As the researchers indicated, the best shift schedules are ones that leave over 11 hours between stopping one shift and beginning another. In particular, the researchers recommended a forward-rotating shift system. An example of this type of work schedule is having one morning shift, then having an evening shift the next day.
Moving forward
What type of shift schedule do you prefer? Does a forward-rotating shift system seem like a schedule you would like in your travel nursing job? If so, talk to your manager about possibly fitting it into your work schedule. However, if that is not possible every day, try cutting back on the amount of short intervals between shifts.