Healthcare providers who regularly work night shifts have a higher risk of flu and respiratory complaints than their colleagues who only work during the day. The poorer perceived sleep quality of night workers partly explains this increased risk of these health complaints. This is the conclusion of RIVM National Institute for Public Health and Environmental researcher Bette Loef in her dissertation on the influence of night work on the health, lifestyle and defense of care providers.
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In health care, many people work alternately day, evening and night shifts. Shift work, especially night work, can lead to harmful health effects. Previous research by Loef shows that healthcare providers who work night shifts at least once a month are 20 percent more likely to have flu and respiratory complaints than staff who only work day shifts.
Lifestyle and defenses
Loef also looked at whether the lifestyle and defenses of night workers were different from those of day workers to investigate whether this could explain possible differences in health. 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 intervention research.
For her research, a collaboration between RIVM and Amsterdam UMC University Medical Center, Loef followed 600 care providers who worked 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.
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