Healthcare Statistics

I decided to investigate the article “Napping during breaks on night shift” for my final thesis. This article is based on a web study that nurse managers who worked in intensive care units and were CACCN (Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses) members conducted in 2009.

In order to fully understand the experiences and perceptions of managers working in critical care units regarding the practice of their nursing staffs napping during night shifts, as well as their opinions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of napping and not napping when taking into account the health and safety of both nurses and patients, this study was conducted. The research questions asked in this article were: what are the advantages and disadvantages associated with napping of nurses during night shift? How fatigue associated with working in shift especially nightshift can threaten the lives nurses and patient? How does fatigue lower the productivity of nurses?

The hypothesis of this article is that it presented valuable perceptions into the conflicts and complexities observed by nurse managers or superiors with respect to night shift napping breaks. That is; the safety and health issues of the patients and staffs, the experiences and expectation of work and break, and advantages and disadvantages that the organizations will face after developing effective guidelines and strategies associated with the introduction of napping breaks during night shifts.

In conclusion, after analyzing the results the forty-seven nurse managers from Canada identified that fatigue was a major threat to the patients and nurses’ health and safety. Some of the examples provided ranged from medication errors, calculation errors, missed orders, to mislabeled blood samples. Additionally, fatigue was also associated with work related injuries such as needle-stick injuries. However, nurse managers’ opinion concerning the issue varied.

Reference

Denis Oriot, Armelle Bridier and Daniel Aiham Ghazali. Research Article: Health Care: Current

Reviews, 2016: 164, DOI: 10.4172/2375-4273.1000164