Shift-Work Schedule Intervention for Extending Restart Breaks after Consecutive Night Shifts: A Non-randomized Controlled Cross-Over Study

Tomohide Kubo (), Shun Matsumoto, Shuhei Izawa, Hiroki Ikeda, Yuki Nishimura, Sayaka Kawakami, Masako Tamaki and Sanae Masuda
Additional contact information
Tomohide Kubo: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Nagao 6-21-1, Tama-Ku, Kawasaki 214-8585, Japan
Shun Matsumoto: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Nagao 6-21-1, Tama-Ku, Kawasaki 214-8585, Japan
Shuhei Izawa: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Nagao 6-21-1, Tama-Ku, Kawasaki 214-8585, Japan
Hiroki Ikeda: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Nagao 6-21-1, Tama-Ku, Kawasaki 214-8585, Japan
Yuki Nishimura: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Nagao 6-21-1, Tama-Ku, Kawasaki 214-8585, Japan
Sayaka Kawakami: Research Center for Child Mental Development, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Handayama 1-20-1, Higashi-ku, Shizuoka 431-3192, Japan
Masako Tamaki: Cognitive Somnology RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Hirosawa 2-1, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
Sanae Masuda: Nursing Department, Kanto Rosai Hospital, Kizukisumiyoshi 1-1, Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki 211-8510, Japan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 22, 1-16

Abstract: More knowledge is required to determine the optimal shiftwork schedule to reduce the harmful effects of short restart breaks between shifts. This 5-month intervention study aimed to examine the effectiveness of extended restart breaks from 31 h to 55 h after consecutive night shifts by considering the characteristics of the circadian rhythm to mitigate fatigue and sleep among 30 shift-working nurses. Subjective and objective variables, such as vital exhaustion, distress, hair cortisol, salivary C-reactive protein, and sleep mattress sensor sensation, were repeatedly measured to examine the differences between the intervention and control conditions. Two-way (condition × time) multilevel analyses showed significantly lower levels of vital exhaustion and distress in the intervention condition ( p = 0.005 and p = 0.004, respectively). However, the expected benefit of the intervention was not observed in objectively measured variables. These findings suggested that an extended restart break after consecutive night shifts can moderately decrease occupational fatigue and stress.

Keywords: shift-work scheduling; occupational-fatigue counseling; participatory approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15042/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15042/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:22:p:15042-:d:973514

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().