Why Do Nurses Have 12-Hour Shifts

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When nurses first started out, the norm was to work an 8-Hour shift, 5 days per week, but hospitals are now implementing new shifts at hospitals. The 12-Hour shifts first started in the 1980s in response to a large nursing shortage. The baby boomers are now the main source of workers for the largest group of health professionals in the United States. Nurses working 12-Hour shifts, though, may not be the answer to America’s problem. With the long hours comes more medical errors, more fatigue, and overall a poor work performance. 8-Hour shifts are slowly come back into the medical field. With better focus and less fatigue, nurses working 8-Hour shifts are a better and safer way for hospitals to treat their patients. When nurses are working 12-Hour shifts, …show more content…
In a study done by Willa L. Fields, it was determined that “there was no significant increase in difficulty of concentration...results indicated [though] that the 12-hour nurses were significantly more drowsy” (190). When nurses are drowsy on shift, they become less alert and oriented with their surroundings.As Linda Scott states in her article, “Inadequate sleep...contributes to loss of situational awareness and creativity, compromised problem solving decision making, and decreased alertness on duty further jeopardizing patients’ safety” (14). A study done by Deborah Martin was measuring the amount of sleep nurses get when working different shifts in a hospital. The data collected indicates that the mean amount of sleep per night for nurses working 8-hour shifts is 7.2 hours and the mean amount of sleep per night for nurses working 12-hour shifts was only 6.9 hours (84). Now that may not seem like much, but over time those hours add up, and fatigue levels, once again, will be on the rise. Nurses with bad sleeping patterns are more susceptible to chronic fatigue in the long run while they are already susceptible to acute fatigue in the present

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