12 Hour Shift Essay

Nurses are cautioned on working longer than 8 hour shifts by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. According to ( ) about 23,000 nurses who provide direct care are working 12 hour shifts. These 12 hour shifts are contributing to an increased amount of fatigue. When nurses are unable to recover after long periods of time this effects their ability to be alert when driving home. There is a serious concern of the long term wear and tear 12 hour shifts can have on the body. These hours can also negatively affect ones physical and mental health state. * states it is critical to not push ourselves beyond our human limits. A cross- cultural experiment conducted by () focuses on the recovery levels of nurses working 12 hour shifts. The study uses the Occupational Fatigue and Exhaustion Recovery scale (OFER). This study was conducted in three hospitals. The OFER scale used three subscales to reference important categories. The first subscale is chronic fatigue/ exhaustion while at work. The next subscale is acute fatigue, which emphasizes on the desire to engage in outside activities after the work shift is over. The last subscale the experiment looked at was the length of time it took a subject to recover from one shift to the next effectively. The outcome of this study shows that one’s ability and mental awareness is seriously

Errors are three times more likely to happen on 12 hour shifts than 8 hour shifts. A 2008 study by Pam Anderson and Tina Townsend, proved that fatigue, stress and understaffing contributes to the high percent of medical errors. Anderson and Townsend explore various studies that suggest 12 hour shifts contribute negatively to the medication error rate. In these studies comparing performance of 12 hour shifts, older nurses had difficulty adjusting the circadian rhymes and trouble maintaining work performance during their