Abstract

Purpose: To find out the relationship between the shift work, and disrupted sleep and consequent fatigue symptoms. Methods: The questionnaires were given to 345 nurses of 4 hospitals with over 400 beds in Daejeon. Results: The shift workers showed worse subjective quality of sleep than the daytime workers, and had significantly higher frequency of "cannot get to sleep within 30 minutes", "wake up in the middle of the night" and "wake up in the early morning". The shift workers had significantly higher scores of subjective symptoms of fatigue than the daytime workers, and the fatigue was found to be the mental type. The subjective symptoms of fatigue scores were significantly higher in the group who had "cannot get to sleep within 30 minutes", "wake up in the middle of the night" and "wake up in the early morning". Conclusion: The study results indicated that the shift workers had the higher level of subjective symptoms of physical fatigue as well as the worse quality of sleep than the daytime workers. It is speculated that the factors attributable to the poor quality of sleep or sleep induction disorders of nurses of hospitals could be due in major part to adaptational difficulties resulting from frequent night shifts.

Keywords

• Nurses;
• Shift Work;
• Sleep problem;
• Fatigue symptoms

• 간호사;
• 교대근무;
• 수면;
• 피로;