Nurses’ shift work: impact on health

Abstract

Introduction: Work is important for the survival and personal attainment of individual people, but it also affects the lifestyle of people who are in the work process and leads to various health problems that employees are facing. Shift work and night work are associated with burnout, lack of personnel and lack of control effect on burnout, personal exhaustion, long working hours are associated also with excess body weight. Quality of life, tiredness, sickness, effectiveness and overall satisfaction with the work of nurses reflects the employer 's sense for an appropriate time schedule, relaxation, psychological support and access to relaxation spaces. Methods: We used descriptive research method. We used the method of reviewing of the scientific literature based on accessibility, content relevance and actuality. We accessed it via an electronic link in the Celje Library. The restrictive criteria were the period January 2017 to April 2020, English language, availability for download, full text and scientific journals with the keywords "nurse", "shift work", "night shift" and "health" in the EBSCO and MEDLINE databases. The survey was conducted in April and May 2020. MS Word was used to display the results. Results: We have used, reviewed and processed 21 full-text articles for a review scientific article, after applying the inclusion criteria: nurse, working conditions, type of work, health link, type of publication, time period, language and availability of the full text, so 11 scientific articles are included in the final research. We found out that night work with many factors has a negative impact on the health of nurses. This is manifested as burnout, exhaustion, fatigue, depression, anxiety, concentration, chance for defects, back pain, poor eating habits, all of which have a profound effect on stress levels. The quality of sleep is also worse, the pattern of sleep is broken and insomnia increases. Discussion and conclusions: Findings show that nurses who work shifts and also do night work feel poorer quality of life, poor quality of sleep, higher