Impact of work schedules on sleep duration of critical care nurses.

BACKGROUND: Sleep deprivation leads to reduced vigilance and potentially impairs work performance. Nurses may work long shifts that may contribute to sleep deprivation.
OBJECTIVE: To assess how nurses' sleep patterns are affected by work schedules and other factors.
METHODS: Between October 2009 and June 2010, a total of 20 critical care nurses completed daily sleep and activity logs and a demographic survey and wore an actigraph to objectively measure sleep time for 14 days.
RESULTS: In a multivariate model with controls for repeated measures, mean sleep time between consecutive work shifts was short: 6.79 hours between 2 day shifts and 5.68 hours between 2 night shifts (P = .01). Sleep time was much greater between days when no shifts were worked (8.53 hours), consistent with catch-up sleep during these times. Every minute of 1-way commuting time was associated with a reduction of sleep time by 0.84 minutes.
CONCLUSION: Critical care nurses obtain reduced amounts of sleep between consecutive work shifts, particularly between consecutive night shifts. Whether this degree of sleep deprivation adversely affects patients' safety needs further study. ©2014 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.