How Do Nurses Reduce Fatigue Or Sleep Deprivation?

12-Hour shifts have constantly been an argument in the field of nursing. This topic interests me because there is constant jitter around this topic, to whether if it’s safe, or not. This can be taken into view from the patients view and also the nurses. Nurses should not be allowed to work 12-hour shifts because, the physical and emotional impact on their bodies is too debilitating, and the length of the shifts could be a potentially hazard to the patients.

West, Ahern, Byrnes and Kwanten (2007) indicate that the new graduate nurses may have not worked full-time in the past; given that graduate nurses begin their career with a full-time job can lead to exhaustion. It was discovered that shift work leads to desynchronisation of physiologically determined circadian rhythms which has a major psychobiology effect and it is commonly perceived the effects of shift work contribute to graduate nurses attrition rate. The NGNs often have a high level of stress due to disturbed sleeping patterns, as they find to adaption to shift work or rotating work hours difficult. Eventually, it leads to feelings of lack of job satisfaction, exhaustion and spending of less time with their friends and family, which can eventually could lead to burnout (West et al., 2007).

When nurses experience fatigue due to excessive overtime, effects that can occur are reduced decision making ability, reduced communication skills, increased forgetfulness, increased tendency of risk taking, reduced ability to handle stress on the job, decreased ability to do complex planning, and inability to recall details which can all danger patients wellbeing. Unfortunately even with all the

Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning

In this proposal the findings stated that the likelihood of making an error is three times higher when working more than 12.5 consecutive hours of nursing practice. Errors made in the healthcare profession can put the patient’s life in jeopardy so it is important for workplaces to take all of these statistics into consideration. The proposal also found that errors are increased with overtime or working over 40 hours per week and night shift workers may have difficulty staying awake due to disturbance in circadian rhythms. In today’s society nurses often work 12 hour shifts, and this evidence is concerning. Nurses are supposed to give their full attention to their patient and have love for what they are doing, but fatigue is getting in the way of that.

Fatigue and sleepiness, tendency to fall asleep, go hand in hand as nurses struggle to stay awake during long, consecutive, day or night shifts. For example, in the Staff Nurse Fatigue and Patient Safety Study, the number of nurses who reported an error or a near miss had less hours of sleep than the nurses who did not report an error or a near miss, and it was determined that there is a 3.4 percent chance of a nursing error when nurses get 6 hours of sleep or less in the prior 24 hours; another study found that the chances of making an error was three times higher when nurses worked more than 12.5 hours per shift (Rogers, 2008). In the Staff Nurse Fatigue and Patient Safety Study, over two thirds of the participants reported that they struggle to stay awake while working and 20 percent reported incidence of falling asleep during their shift (Rogers, 2008). Nurses also do not get adequate breaks while working long shifts, according to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) less than 50% of work breaks for are away from patient care, which means nurses never truly get a chance to relax (Phillips, 2014). Not only is the patient safety at risk when nurses are fatigued, but the well being of nurses is at stake as well. While nurses are fatigued they are risking their

Patients in a hospital and/or healthcare facilities have to be cared for all day and all night, everyday of the week by nurses. The usual way to fulfill this need is to divide up the day into three 8-hour shifts. Different shifts have been put into place to help improve nurse satisfaction, decrease the nursing shortage and save the hospital money. The 24-hour day is made up of two 12-hour shifts; 12 hours in the day and 12 hours at night. There has been quite an ongoing debate over the years regarding this issue of nurses working over 8 hours in a single day. Many people, such as hospital nursing administrators, have reason to believe that working long hour shifts causes more errors in

Patient care quality results incorporates patient outcomes along with the patients’ well- being and these tend to decrease with more mandatory overtime when nurses are fatigued (Mandatory, 2003). The best quality patient care comes as a result of patient security and contentment (Mandatory, 2003). Patients do not come to the nurses with their best, but as nurses, they are expected to be at their best, it can be hard to give their best when fatigued with mandatory overtime (Mandatory,

Patient safety is among one of the top priorities associated with nursing as a profession. One of the common factors that contribute to fatigue is sleep (Rogers, 2008). According to Rogers (2008), it is shown that nurses have the inability to be efficiently productive with inadequate sleeping habits. This ultimately results in an inability to provide safe, competent care, as nurses are over worked, thus triples the chance of making an error (Rogers, 2008). Greater chances of making errors are most likely to occur when a nurse works past 8.5 hours (Rogers, Hwang, Scott, Aiken, & Dinges, 2004).

A staggering 1.3 million hospitalized patients become victims to medical error and 100,000 deaths reported are due to preventable errors each year (Scott, Rogers, Hwang & Zhang, 2006). A recent study also suggests more than one quarter of nurses made at least one error, and more than one third made at least one near error while working more than 12 hours in a shift (Scott, Rogers, Hwang & Zhang, 2006 ) . Additional compelling evidenced surfaced through research reveals decreased awareness of situation, increased suffering, and occupational injury related to working 12 plus hours a day (Nurse Fatigue White Paper, 2013). Hence, based on evidence reviewed related to healthcare provider fatigue and my personal experience in a hospital setting,

As medicine and nursing are evidence-based field, the ability to critically read and evaluate researchs allows nurses to gain better understanding and knowledge of the subjects and develop useful research skills to advance their education. Through exploring learning more about different researchs of their field, nurses become a better leader and health care provide in the field in which nurses carefully select and critically apply the knowlegdes in clinical settings to provide better and more effective patient care. To evaluate the weekness and strength of the reseasrch “Nurses’s Work Schedule Characteristic, Nurse Staffing, and Patient Mortality”, protection of human participation, data collection, data mangament and analysis, implications of the practice and future research of the research go through careful exaimnation and

The objective, for hospitals should be to switch from 12-hour shifts to 8-hour shifts over the next 5 years. During the transitional years, limit the consecutive days that a nurse may work while working 12-hour shifts. Studies show that when nurses work 12-hour shifts more than 2 days in a row, they are more likely to suffer from burn out (Wisetborisut, Angkurawaranon, Jiraporncharoen, Uaphanthasath, Wiwantanadate, 2014, p. 279). If a hospital does decide to keep 12-hour shifts, design schedules so that there are no more than 2 consecutive days in which a nurse is working 12-hour shifts. Hospitals should also make it mandatory to take the next day off after working a 16-hour shift. Another alternative would be after working one 16-hour shift, have the nurse take mandatory time off for no less than sixteen hours following the 16-hour shift. This way the nurse has the opportunity to get an adequate amount of rest before having to come in and work another shift.

Nurses and advanced practitioners are susceptible to legal ramifications as well. They could lose their licenses as a result of working long shifts and suffering sleep deprivation. Nursing fatigue costs the United States billions of dollars each year (Reed, 2013). Organizations need to be proactive when it comes to tracking nurse working hours but it is also the responsibility of the nurse to be mindful of the hours they work and that they are getting an appropriate amount of sleep. The National Heart,

233). Nurses are especially vulnerable to the ill effects of night shift fatigue because of long hours of night shift work (usually greater than 12 hours), limited number of breaks, and inability to sleep during daytime hours when the amount and quality of sleep is far below those who sleep at

Excessive work hours can otherwise be correlated to destructive behavior such as drinking, smoking, and habitual laziness. (Workaholism, 2015). Additionally, the injury risk depends on the time of day that one has worked, the number of successive days that have been worked, and the amount of time that the individual spends at the workplace. Lamberg (2004) noted “... The risk of injury in the 12th hour of work is twice that of the first 8 hours...Workers have a 30% higher risk of injuries on the night shift than on the day shift…." and "the more days that individuals have worked since their last period of time off, the more likely they are to be injured....". Two to five percent of nurses work upwards of sixty hours per week, and twenty-eight percent work shifts that exceed eight hours, even though the Institute of Medicine published a report that suggested no more than sixty hours per week and twelve hours per day. Working such hours can cause musculoskeletal disorders including back, neck, and shoulder pain lasting a week or longer (Lamberg, 2004). Some workaholics have argued that working as diligently as they do counteracts depression and anxiety, however, workaholism is equally calamitous as chemical addiction or alcoholism. All types of addiction release the same