The 12-Hour Nursing Shift: Preferred by Staff, but Good for Patients?

A new study finds reduced communication skills after consecutive shifts but no clinical deficits.

Twelve-hour shifts have been a mainstay of nursing schedules since they began as a staffing strategy in the 1970s, but debate continues about their effect on nurses’ health and ability to safely care for patients.

Studies have examined both aspects of the issue. Regarding staffing, researchers have found that a majority of nurses and hospital administrators prefer 12-hour shifts as a means to achieve continuity of care, ease of scheduling, and for nurses, work–life balance. Regarding patient care quality, research has shown an association between longer consecutive shifts and more clinical errors.

The latest findings. 

A recent study from Washington State University aimed to test the latter. The research team recruited 94 RNs working consecutive 12-hour shifts to examine the cumulative effect of shift work–related changes on sustained attention, cognitive effectiveness, and subjective sleepiness. Participants were evaluated in two 20-minute simulated care situations by other RNs trained to assess performance. Nurses working day and night shifts were randomized across fatigued and rested conditions, defined respectively as having worked three consecutive 12-hour shifts or having three consecutive days off.

[…]

2022-07-15T10:14:05-04:00July 14th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

A Long History of Abortion

Looking to the past for context and perspective as the U.S. abortion care landscape changes dramatically.

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade ended women’s nationwide legal right to abortion after nearly 50 years.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

Several states with so-called trigger laws banning abortion moved to implement these immediately. Although some of these laws have since been challenged in court, within a few months it’s expected that women living in about half the states will have very limited or no access to abortion care. Most of these laws—predominantly in the Midwest, South, and Plains states—make no exception for rape or to safeguard a woman’s health, until she is at risk of death.

Limiting health care access amid rising maternal mortality rates.

These restrictions on women’s health care occur while the U.S. continues to have a maternal mortality rate much higher than in other developed nations. According to the latest statistics from the CDC, this rate is rising, and health disparities persist: Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared with White women.

Women who have historically been most marginalized will be disproportionately affected by the Supreme Court’s decision, which is expected to affect […]

2022-07-11T06:31:54-04:00July 11th, 2022|Public health, women's health|0 Comments
Read More

Looking Beyond Nursing Education Offerings Can Open Doors

In a world where time efficiency is supreme, nurses often seek educational opportunities only within their area of nursing expertise. After all, further expertise in my specialty area will directly apply to work, right? It may seem counterintuitive to look for learning opportunities outside nursing, but the results may surprise you.

I am a nursing PhD student, and the PhD program contains only one “independent study” elective course. One chance for me to choose my own topic. Most students choose to research background literature for their dissertation, but I chose . . . to audit a law course. My future research project involves children with special needs, and I discovered a local special education law course. School education is vitally important for families with special needs children, but the rules surrounding education are poorly understood by parents—and nurses.

Since I don’t have a law degree, I wasn’t certain how much I would understand or use the material covered in the class, but auditing the class turned out to be the best decision I could have made, yielding immediate benefits and opening doors of future opportunity.

Outside the educational comfort zone.

Initially, I felt excitement tinged with trepidation and self-consciousness. To audit a course, I needed to obtain permission from […]

2022-07-08T13:00:07-04:00July 8th, 2022|career, Nursing|1 Comment
Read More

Keeping Current with Cardiac Device Technologies

“If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.”

When I was an RN in the cardiac electrophysiology lab, we frequently performed device implants or procedures for patients with heart failure. When giving report to the telemetry nurses, I often felt I didn’t have enough time to fully explain the background for the procedures we performed.

In my CE feature article in AJN‘s June issue, “Guideline-Directed Cardiac Devices for Patients with Heart Failure,” I share an exemplar of a patient who had one of these procedures—an implanted cardioverter/defibrillator with cardiac resynchronization therapy. If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.

It is challenging to keep up with the advances in health care devices. In the article, I also describe some other recent cardiac technologies. Patients with any these devices may be seen in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings, and nurses may benefit from a general understanding of their purpose and patient care. […]

2022-07-05T09:28:04-04:00July 5th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Loss from Nurse Attrition Goes Deeper than Numbers

On watching familiar colleagues leave your unit. 

Photo by Javier Allegue/ Unsplash

It feels as though every week, I hear of yet another one to two colleagues who are leaving our pediatric ICU (PICU).

Reasons colleagues leave.

They’ve been at all kinds of experience levels. Some have only been in our unit for a couple of years, and some have been with us for anywhere from eight to 15 years. Some leave because they realize as young nurses that they don’t want to be around so much pediatric death and dying in the long-term, so they move on to other positions where they can care for healthier populations. Some leave because they’ve already been around so much pediatric death and dying for so long by now that it’s time to practice in different kinds of spaces for their own mental and emotional well-being. Some leave for the significantly higher pay offered by travel nurse positions, and some leave to be closer to family in other states. A smaller percentage leave quietly without ever really disclosing the reasons why.

Every departure hurts on a numbers level.

In a time when nurse staffing seems to be at critically low levels everywhere, raising our workload and stress levels to new all-time highs, every departure hurts on a sheer numbers […]

2022-06-29T10:48:07-04:00June 29th, 2022|Nursing|2 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top