Working Hours and Shift Work

1.1.1. Working hours and shift work

Nurses are working under in a variety of shift work systems to be able to provide continuous care for patients. However, 24 hours workplace organizations are now very common, such as in the healthcare and industrial sectors. This requires the staff to be adapted with many various forms of shift work schedules. In terms of healthcare sector, the shift work schedules are considered shift duration which highlights two main categories of shift systems, each system provides 24 hours of care. The shift work can be three eight hours shift, or two twelve hours shift. Eight hour shifts can be divided as morning/afternoon/ and evening shifts for five days in a week. On the other hand, a twelve-hour shift is widely popular and characterized by a compressed working week which is more than eight-hour duration but less than five days in a week. Applying 12- hour shifts can result in a benefit by having more days off. Moreover, in response to nursing shortage and cost effectiveness, twelve-hour shifts are widely been applied in the hospitals. However, despite of the advantages of applying twelve-hour shifts, there are many disadvantages. Long working hours have an impact on nurse’s health and wellbeing. It found that long hour shifts are associated with fatigue which can increase the risk of nursing errors and affects the quality of nursing care. Additionally, the level of job satisfaction and stress among the nurses are affected (Scott et al.,2006).

Furthermore, the regulations in some countries restrict the number of working hours, such as 40 hour/week, or longer 60 hour/week. For example, in Saudi Arabia the ministry of health in the governmental hospitals restrict the working hours to 40 hour/wee...

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...i female nurses prefer to work 8- hour shifts five days in a week instead of 12-hour shifts and having more days off (Gilany and Al-Wehad, 2001). However, this aspect is being ignored by the hospital’s organization that may lead to increase the turnover rate of Saudi nurses. Therefore, working hour is very important aspect that should be considered. It boosts the rate of staff turnover and dissatisfaction which makes most Saudi nurses tend to leave the hospital. Secondly, it plays a key role with regard to the safety for both patients and nurses and the quality of care. For example, in my field work the incident reports as a result of nurses’ fatigue, and stress, and are well-documented. Thus, conducting this review is very important to make more evidence to enhance the shift system at my field of work and increase the rate of Saudi staff nurses.