Study on the Fatigue of Hospital Nurses with the Semi-night Duty Full-time Working System Trail in a Hospital Affiliated with a National University School of Medicine

Abstract

This study evaluates effectiveness of a semi-night duty full-time working system implemented at a university hospital.

Forty-five nurses from a hospital affiliated with a school of medicine at a national university in Japan participated in the investigation: 15 semi-night duty full-time workers serving as an experimental group and 30 three-shift workers serving as a control group.

The following results were obtained from the data collected before and after the three-month trial period of the new semi-shift/full-time working system:

1) The overall CFSI pattern for the experimental group decreased, dropping below the basic average complaint rate. The degree of mental fatigue, in particular, drastically decreased.

2) The CFSI pattern for the control group hardly changed over the course of time. The degree of physical fatigue remained around the basic average complaint rate and the dgree of mental fatigue stayed around the 70%ile level.

3) The CFSI pattern for the experimental group remained lower than that for the control group at any point in the course of the trial.

4) The physiological-psychological functional test scores (the flicker value, the skin two-point difference threshold value, and the fingertip pinch force value) for both the experimental and control groups remained around the average throughout the trial period. Moreover, no difference was found between the scores for the two groups at any point in the course of trial.

From these results, it can be concluded that there was no increase in fatigue among the semi-night duty full-time workers, which seems to support introduction and implementation of the new working system in hospitals, especially in terms of reducing the worker fatigue level.