Twelve-Hour Shifts Are Problematic for Patient and Nurse Safety, Yet

Essay

Twelve-hour shifts are problematic for patient and nurse safety, yet hospitals continue to keep the 12-hour shift schedule. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine (Board on Health Care Services & Institute of Medicine, 2004) published a report that referred to studies as early as 1988 that discussed the negative effects of rotating shifts on intervention accuracy. Workers with 12-hour shifts experienced more fatigue than workers on 8-hour shifts. In another study done in Turkey by Ilhan, Durukan, Aras, Turkcuoglu, and Aygun (2006), factors relating to increased risk for injury were age of 24 years or younger, less than 4 years of nursing experience, working in surgical intensive care units, and working for more than 8 hours. As a clinician reading these studies, what would your next step be?