Healthcare providers who regularly work night shifts are more likely to have flu and respiratory complaints than colleagues who only work during the day. This is the conclusion of Loef in her thesis on the influence of night work on the health, lifestyle and immune system of care providers.
In health care, many people work alternately day, evening and night shifts. Shift work, especially night work, can lead to harmful health effects. Loef concludes that healthcare providers who regularly work at night are 20 percent more likely to have flu and respiratory complaints than staff who only work during the day.
For her research, a collaboration between RIVM and Amsterdam UMC, Loef followed 600 care providers, working at various hospitals in the Netherlands. She did this for six months during the flu season with a specially developed smartphone app. In this app, the healthcare providers could indicate daily whether they had flu or respiratory complaints. The app then identified episodes of such complaints.
Loef also examined whether the lifestyle and defenses of night workers were different from those of day workers. This showed that the poorer perceived sleep quality of night workers could explain part of their increased risk of flu and respiratory complaints. For the other lifestyle behaviors, Loef saw that night workers generally had a similar sleep duration, free-time exercise pattern and eating frequency as day workers. According to the PhD student, improving the perceived sleep quality can be a useful starting point for future research.
Thursday, September 24
Promotion (VU), Aula, 11.45 am
Bette Loef: More chance of flu and respiratory complaints due to night shift
Link to thesis
Source: Amsterdam UMC
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