Medical program for shift workers – impacts on chronic disease and mortality outcomes

Does workplace health promotion reach shift workers?

“…Therefore, both in terms of availability and participation, there are likely barriers for interventions to reach shift workers. Still, results from previous research are mixed: two studies in the same population found higher participation in health promotion activities among shift workers (22,23) and two other studies found lower participation among shift workers (24,25).…”

“…Among other things, the program included medical examinations and health promotion retreats and it was found that, compared with day workers, shift workers participated in more health seminar days (0.68 versus 0.31 days) and more examinations (0.98 versus 0.50 examinations) per work year (22). Using the same study population, it was also reported that 47% of the shift workers and 27% of the day workers attended a 1-3 weeks health seminar program (23).…”

Gastrointestinal disorders among shift workers

“…Occurrence of ulcer disease and non-ulcer dyspepsia was not significantly different between the two groups. The shift schedule at BASF is described in another report as being fast forward-rotating 12-hour shifts, with the day shift beginning at 06.00 hours and the night shift at 18.00 hours (32). A strength of the study was the case ascertainment procedure, which made it possible to discriminate between ulcer disease and functional dyspepsia.…”

Shift work and the risk of cardiovascular disease. A systematic review and meta-analysis including dose–response relationship

“…This could be explained by the "healthy shift worker" effect, which is another limitation in this research field (19). This means that only healthy employees are selected into shift work, based on pre-employment screening, or self-selection out of shift work due to ill health (19,46). Such bias could lead to CVD cases being underestimated in longitudinal studies, if shift workers changed to day shift or had left the workforce at follow-up because they developed CVD.…”