12 Hour Shift In Nursing

Nursing in the United States and around the world is often associated with twelve-hour shifts and fatigue. As individuals enter into the field of nursing they are often well aware that they will work a twelve-hour shift, at least once throughout the duration of their career. Many new evidence-based research articles have surfaced in the past few years, that may signal that twelve-hour shifts are not ideal for the nurse nor their patients. The increasing length of a shift often signals a positive correlation to overall poor job satisfaction, quality of care, and patient safety (Ball, J., Day, T., Murrells, T., Dall 'Ora, C., Rafferty, A. M., Griffiths, P., & Maben, J., 2017). Other articles suggest that the twelve-hour shift allows for more

A participant between the ages of twenty to thirty-nine was 57% and between the ages of forty to fifty-nine were 43%. Those nurses with bachelor’s degrees were 57% and 43% had an associate’s degree. The data from the survey also concluded that nurses working a twelve hour shift got a mean total of 6.9 hours of sleep per night, while an eight-hour shift nurse got 7.2 hours of sleep per night. In the areas of acute fatigue, chronic fatigue, and inter-shift recovery all the scores were higher for the twelve-hour shift length, which means that the nurses experienced more fatigue working longer hours and had a more difficult time recovering energy expended during the previous work shift (Martin,

Although, twelve-hour shifts may be cost-effective for employers, by reducing the number of employees necessary, research shows that it may not be the most efficient way to handle the budgeting problems, because it leads to so many negative adverse effects.

David Aveyard, an intensive care unit nurse, has varying viewpoints of twelve-hour shifts, and evaluates both the positive and negative aspects of working longer shift times. He conducted a literature review, which evaluated the effects of twelve-hour shifts in a critical care setting. Aveyard only used articles that were research-based, published in a peer-reviewed nursing journal and relating to intensive care unit (ICU) nursing, patients and twelve-hour