Cardiac Autonomic Modulation during on-Call Duty under Working Hours Restriction

Jien-Wen Chien, Chung-Yen Chen, Sheng-Hsuan Lin, Shih-Wen Lin and Yu-Hsuan Lin
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Jien-Wen Chien: Department of Pediatrics, Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua 50006, Taiwan
Chung-Yen Chen: Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei 10048, Taiwan
Sheng-Hsuan Lin: Institute of Statistics, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Shih-Wen Lin: Institute of Statistics, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Yu-Hsuan Lin: Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli 35053, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Background: Medical residency is a time of high stress and long working hours, which increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. This study aimed to investigate the autonomic modulation of resident physicians throughout the on-call duty cycle. Methods: Spectral analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) was used to compute cardiac parasympathetic modulation (high-frequency power, HF) and cardiac sympathetic modulation (normalized low-frequency power, LF%, and the ratio of LF and HF, LF/HF) of 18 residents for a consecutive 4-day cycle. Results: Male residents show reduced cardiac sympathetic modulation (i.e., higher LF/HF and LF%) than the female interns. Medical residents’ cardiac parasympathetic modulation (i.e., HF) significantly increased on the first and the second post-call day compared with the pre-call day. In contrast, LF% was significantly decreased on the first and the second post-call day compared with the pre-call day. Similarly, LF/HF was significantly decreased on the second post-call day compared with the pre-call day. LF/HF significantly decreased on the first post-call day and on the second post-call day from on-call duty. Conclusion: The guideline that limits workweeks to 80 h and shifts to 28 h resulted in reduced sympathetic modulation and increased parasympathetic modulation during the two days following on-call duty.

Keywords: autonomic nervous system; Heart rate variability; medical resident; on-call duty; working hours restriction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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