Connect
MJA
MJA

Medical staff working the night shift: can naps help?

R Doug McEvoy and Leon L Lack
Med J Aust 2006; 185 (7): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2006.tb00606.x
Published online: 2 October 2006

Napping at night may benefit both health professionals and their patients

Delivering medical care is a 24-hour business that inevitably involves working the night shift. However, night shift requires the health professional to work when the body’s clock (circadian system) demands sleep. Added to this is the problem of “sleep debt”, arising from both prolonged prior wakefulness on the first night shift and cumulative sleep debt after several nights’ work and repeated unsatisfactory daytime sleeps. A further aggravation, particularly for trainee medical staff in teaching hospitals, has been the demand for excessive work hours across the working week. As has been dramatically shown in recent well controlled studies, the net result of this assault on the sleep of health professionals can be impaired patient safety,1 and the health and safety of health professionals themselves.2


  • 1 School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA.
  • 2 Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, Repatriation General Hospital, Adelaide, SA.
  • 3 School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA.


Correspondence: doug.mcevoy@rgh.sa.gov.au

  • 1. Landrigan CP, Rothschild JM, Cronin JW, et al. Effect of reducing interns’ work hours on serious medical errors in intensive care units. N Engl J Med 2004; 351: 1838-1848.
  • 2. Barger LK, Cade BE, Ayas NT, et al. Extended work shifts and the risk of motor vehicle crashes among interns. N Engl J Med 2005; 352: 125-134.
  • 3. Horrocks N, Pounder R. Working the night shift: preparation, survival and recovery. A guide for junior doctors. London: Royal College of Physicians of London, 2006. http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/books/nightshift/index.asp (accessed Aug 2006).
  • 4. Borbely AA. A two-process model of sleep regulation. Hum Neurobiol 1982; 1: 195-204.
  • 5. Dawson D, Reid K. Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment. Nature 1997; 388: 235.
  • 6. Lack LC, Lushington K. The rhythms of human sleep propensity and core body temperature. J Sleep Res 1996; 5: 1-11.
  • 7. Brooks A, Lack L. A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: which nap duration is most recuperative? Sleep 2006; 29: 831-840.
  • 8. Dinges DF, Orne MT, Whitehouse WG, Orne EC. Temporal placement of a nap for alertness: contributions of circadian phase and prior wakefulness. Sleep 1987; 10: 313-329.
  • 9. Takahashi M, Arito H, Fukuda H. Nurses’ workload associated with 16-h night shifts. II: Effects of a nap taken during the shifts. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 1999; 53: 223-225.
  • 10. Arora V, Dunphy C, Chang VY, et al. The effects of on-duty napping on intern sleep time and fatigue. Ann Intern Med 2006; 144: 792-798.
  • 11. Purnell MT, Feyer AM, Herbison GP. The impact of a nap opportunity during the night shift on the performance and alertness of 12-h shift workers. J Sleep Res 2002; 11: 219-227.

Author

remove_circle_outline Delete Author
add_circle_outline Add Author

Comment
Do you have any competing interests to declare? *

I/we agree to assign copyright to the Medical Journal of Australia and agree to the Conditions of publication *
I/we agree to the Terms of use of the Medical Journal of Australia *
Email me when people comment on this article

Online responses are no longer available. Please refer to our instructions for authors page for more information.