Abstract

Background: Female nurses are highly susceptive to night shift work. Age, nap times during night shift, physical activity level, and lifestyles strongly associated with fatigue at night shift; however, a comprehensive analysis of these factors including psychological research could not be conducted.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to prove the risk factors for fatigue of medical-surgical female nurses having night shift working based on the data of demographics, lifestyles, subjective symptoms, and performance status from pre night shift to post-holiday.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 97 Japanese female night shift nurses. The data of age, body mass index, clinical experience years, lifestyles, and nap time during night shift were collected. Total steps, energy expenditure, and subjective symptoms; drowsiness, instability, uneasiness, dullness, and eye strain had been continuously measured and evaluated from pre night shift to post-holiday. Nurses who recovered from fatigue were assigned to a recovery group; other nurses were assigned to a non-recovery group based on improvements in total five subjective symptoms between pre night shift and post-holiday.
Results: Age, body mass index, nap time length during night shift, clinical experience years, performance status, and lifestyles were not different between recovery group and non-recovery group. Logistic regression analysis showed that drowsiness and eyestrain are significant risk factor for fatigue at night shift. Adjusted odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for fatigue in medical-surgical female nurse having night shift were 2.04 (1.36-3.01) in drowsiness and 2.03 (1.30-3.18) in eyestrain (P<0.001).
Conclusions: Psychological detachment from work environment is important for recovering fatigue from night work-stressors during night shift. Nursing management should be positively organized for protecting medical-surgical female nurses’ health having night shift and for preventing medical error.