12 Facts About Shift work

Shift work is an employment practice designed to make use of, or provide service across, all 24 hours of the clock each day of the week.

Shift work sleep disorder is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder characterized by insomnia, excessive sleepiness, or both.

The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer listed "shift work that involves circadian disruption" as probably carcinogenic.

The results found that all shift work groups exhibited significant decreased total sleep time and decreased sleep efficiency in the night shift but efficiency increased in the rest day.

Shift work has been shown to negatively affect workers, and has been classified as a specific disorder.

Related searches

The EU directive limits night Shift work involving "special hazards or heavy physical or mental strain" to an average of eight hours in any 24-hour period.

Fatigue due to shift work has contributed to several industrial disasters, including the Three Mile Island accident, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the Chernobyl disaster.

The Alaska Oil Spill Commission's final report on the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster found that it was "conceivable" that excessive Shift work hours contributed to crew fatigue, which in turn contributed to the vessel's running aground.

Multiple factors need to be considered when developing optimal shift work schedules, including shift timing, length, frequency and length of breaks during shifts, shift succession, worker commute time, as well as the mental and physical stress of the job.

Shift work was once characteristic primarily of the manufacturing industry, where it has a clear effect of increasing the use that can be made of capital equipment and allows for up to three times the production compared to just a day shift.

Shift work is the norm in fields related to public protection and healthcare, such as law enforcement, emergency medical services, firefighting, security and hospitals.

Shift work is a contributing factor in many cases of medical errors.