Rotating Night Shifts Erode Long-Term Health of Nurses

Ten years or more of such shift work decreased the odds of healthy aging by 20%.

Shift work is a staple of hospital nursing, and several large studies have found that rotating night shifts, in particular, are associated with increased mortality. Now, an international group of researchers has found evidence of significant harm to nurses’ overall health from rotating night shifts.

Detrimental effects on healthy aging.

Published in the May issue of JAMA Network Open, the study by Shi and colleagues found that 10 or more years of night shift work—defined as at least three nights per month in addition to day and evening shifts—conferred 20% decreased odds of healthy aging. The study’s end point for healthy aging was reaching age 70 without major chronic disease, physical limitations, memory impairment, and mental health issues. The association between a history of night shift work and deteriorated health was unchanged when age, body mass index, or lifestyle factors were considered. Although the mechanisms underlying these effects are unknown, the authors pointed to several possibilities, including altered circadian rhythms since they are important to metabolic regulation and disruptions may impair physical health.

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2022-08-04T09:23:34-04:00August 4th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments

Experienced Bedside Nurses: An Endangered Species?

“The trend toward our hospitals being primarily populated with nurses with less than two years’ experience is worrisome.”

At least three colleagues who’ve recently been patients in hospitals or had family members who were have remarked on the youthful nurses they encountered—and on their lack of experience. In two of the conversations, my colleagues cited instances in which this lack of experience was detrimental to care, one of them dangerous. That “sixth sense,” that level of awareness that comes with lived experience and becomes part of expert clinical knowledge, is important for safe, quality patient care.

In the February editorial, I report on the answers I received when I queried our editorial board members about new nurses’ inclination to work in acute care for only two years to gain experience and then leave to pursue NP careers. Many of the board members have seen a similar trend, one reflected by research on nurse retention, some of it published in AJN (most recently, see Christine Kovner’s February 2014 study on the work patterns of newly licensed RNs, free until February 6). […]

Working a Shift with Theresa Brown

bookBy Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Many of you may be familiar with Theresa Brown, nurse and author of Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between, as well as a blogger for the New York Times. Brown also writes a quarterly column for AJN called What I’m Reading (her latest column, which will be free until August 15, is in the July issue). Her new book, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients Lives, will come out in September, and I was able to read a prepublication copy. (You can pre-order it.)

I don’t usually write book reviews. I think of most books like food: what one person finds delicious may be less savory to another. But I’m making an exception because this book is an accurate and well-written portrayal of nursing (at last!).

Anyone who wants to know what it’s like to be a nurse in a hospital today should read this book. Patients, families, and non-nurse colleagues tend to see nurses as ever-present yet often in the background, quietly moving from room to room, attending to patients, and distributing medications or charting at computers. But what they don’t understand about what nurses do is what Brown so deftly describes—the cognitive multitasking and constant reordering of priorities that occur in the course of one shift as Brown manages the needs of four very […]

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