Effects of Long-working Hours in Nursing Health, Medicine Essay (Essay Sample)

Effects of Long Working Hours Shifts in Nursing
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Effects of Long Working Hours Shifts in Nursing
On various occasions, nurses are exposed to long hours shifts at their workplace, which in one way or the other makes them vulnerable psychologically. The long-hours shifts at work put nurses at the threat of short sleep duration. Insufficiency in sleep elevates the risk for a decline in job performance, a broad array of chronic diseases, obesity, injuries, and errors related to fatigue, which might cause harm to the patients. Nurses should not work for more hours in their shifts; by the nature of their job, 12 or more hours nurses' work changes and the overtime workers, register lower patient safety, and quality reduces vigilance for nurses and increase risk of errors.
Working for more than 12 hours in nursing causes poor performance because of fatigue, job dissatisfaction, burn-out, and physiological strain, which negatively influences patients' safety and care (Maynard, 2016). Various studies on nurses in the United States hospitals indicate that when working for more than 12 hours, the risk of causing errors increases significantly. This is common when nurses work for over 40 hours in a week. In comparison to nurses working under shifts of 8 to 9 hours, those who work for the period of 10 to 11-hours likelihood of exhibiting dissatisfaction (Maynard, 2016). In most cases, when the proportion of nurses working for over 13-hours increases, there is an escalation in patients' dissatisfaction with the nursing services. The performance of nurses is enormously affected through job strain, while fatigue causes job dissatisfaction.