Impact of shift work on newly graduate nurses

Answer

Impact of Shift Work on New Graduate Nurses

Shift work is the act of arranging tasks for different societal, financial, and technical purposes. Shift work can bsed by different institutions of different hours and shifts outside of normal daytime hours that include late evening or overnight work. Adequate shreds of evidence show that shift work has a great positive change on the health and wellbeing of workers in several ways. Shift work can have a positive impact onnurses in their place of work like in advancing clinical skills, have adequate time to spend with the patients who are ailing in the hospital, improves autonomy, lowers levels of job demands, increases the vital opportunities to participate in social and family activities, more available time to aid in managing work-life conflicts, helps to develop self-coping skills to manage some challenges with greater flexibility and convenience and stressors of shifts of work. However, shift work also has some negative effects on the body like the physiologic effects in the body, lack of enough sleep more so when a nurse is in the night shift, decline in the performance of work at the workplace, and nurses having chronic diseases may have difficulties in managing symptoms and disease progression when undergoing shift work. This essay will tackle the impacts of shift work on the nursesexposed to short or longer time of shift work.

Effect of Stress On New Graduates

The high need for a nurse's time and energy is what is affecting the work rate of a nurse. New graduates have several problems like inability to contact a provider, lack of managerial support, workloads levels, interpersonal issues. In new graduate nurses, stress has been a major problem affecting newly graduate workers which entail high attrition rates by changing the employers. Proper ways of managing stress should be put into practice. One main way of reducing the level of stress to workers is by making them have enough exercise. Exercise improves both physical and emotional health as well as reducing the level of stress to other nurses.

Work shift helps in managing work-life conflict. Work-life conflict occurs when someone has psychological stress when there is a high demand of time at home and workplace too. A nurse can have humble time to choose or have enough control over the shifts at work. A nurse can be able to attend to both home and hospital duties which can improve social and home lives by good control over working schedules related to the work-life conflict. One can achieve work-life balance can upgrade their quality of life by participating in both roles by attending the high demanding roles in the family level and working areas in their daily lives. (Son et al,.2018)

Life skills can be advanced well in places of work if there is a work shift. Work skills can be brought about by the introduction of new techniques and treatment methodologies in the hospital or clinic. The nurse can also have enough skills on facing the challenges of ensuring there is a smooth flow of managing and coordinating good care for the patients who are severely sick. Work shift can also improve the nurse's abilities and skills in handling the patient's safety in the hospital by keenly checking on the patient's well being

Work shift helps in improving autonomy.There is an improvement in autonomy. Autonomy is the best situation of managing oneself. Employees who are free to make their own decisions and choices on how they perform their duties are happier, more devoted, their work output is very high and they adhere to the set rules and regulations without going against the set rules and regulations. Autonomy also plays a pivotal role in developing employee's sense of engagement with their duties and the administration. This has a great impact on the worker's decision to remain intact with the organization or to look for a greener pasture. The level of autonomy a nurse can experience may depend on day-to-day activities in the hospital. Nurses may be well conversant on how to approach their daily duties, with improving skills, experience and, individual preferences. The nurses will have several advantages of having autonomy like greater happiness and engagement, accountability of workers, employees feel more valued, nurses feel motivated to learn new skills, a greater sense of teamwork and organization culture, and improves work-life balance.

Shift work increases the opportunity to participate in social and family activities. When the nurse has fixed schedules, they can be given work shifts which will have a great impact on their social and family activities. When the workers have the night shift, they will have a humble time to spend with their family members. Workers who have work shifts will have time to spend with their family members and educate them about the moral values in life. Examples of social activities are sports participation, education trips, activity camps. Work-family conflict may develop when there is too much pressure from the workplace and family issues that are incompatible. Due to these issues, participation is one main role that is cumbersome to make, but if there is a work shift, there will be adequate time to make a good decision on which occasions to attend. Support of families and friends is very crucial in a nurse's life. Work shifts may have several negative impacts on nurses' social and domestic lives. So, the support of the family is very crucial in a nurse's life. Social support from family, friends, and co-workers increases job satisfaction for nurses and shift work tolerance. The development of positive relationships at the place of work can lead to supportive and beneficial connections between nurses.

Shift work creates greater flexibility and convenience. Employees can have time to attend to personal matters when they are not at the working place or when they are in shifts. Flexibility and improve job satisfaction and provide a sense of freedom to schedule meetings during the busy times of the day. Workers can be exposed to more learning opportunities when they are in work shifts. They will have enough time to allocate training activities during the day without taking leaves.Being in the position to cope with the challenges of working in shifts, nurses need to mitigate potentially adverse effects of shift work. This will enable nurses to attend to patients 24 hours and some nurses will have enough time to rest and sleep before and after shifts (Dhani et al,.2018)

Shift work causes lack of enough sleep. One main negative effect is; long working hours expose nurses to lack of enough sleep and sleep disturbance. Lack of enough sleep increases the risks of reducing the work rate at the working place due to tiredness. When a nurse is very sleepy, he or she cannot perform a given task perfectly. Lack of enough sleep can lead to accidents due to lack of concentration at the workplace. When a nurse is sleepy, he or she cannot see properly due to tiredness hence a lot of injuries may occur. When a nurse sleeps for fewer hours, he or she may develop health problems like heart disease, heart attack, the failure of the heart to function properly, the nurse may have an irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes.Long working hours may lead to physiologic effects on the heart beat and sleep-wake phenomena. Nurses who have more than two shifts may have a low rate of the circadian rhythm. (Booker et al., 2018)

Lower levels of job demand in nursing. Nursing is a highly demanding and tiresome profession. Negative consequences of job demands may be as a result of poor quality of care, poor health, burnout, high desire to quit the job, and work satisfaction. Burnout, absenteeism, turnover can harm a nurse's life. Job demands are the most dangerous stressors that lead to several negative impacts on the nurse. Job demand is an unavoidable circumstance that leads to many problems. Hence, there is a strong need to look for a solution on how to decrease the level of job demand on new nurses who have graduated. This will improve the relationship between job demand and job satisfaction.

Shift work is needed by several nurses to develop self-coping skills to mitigate some of the difficulties and stressors of shift work. Coping is the personal effort used to adapt and survive in stressful conditions. This improves mental health outcomes. Coping strategies are categorized into two main groups, one is external and the other one is internal or emotional focused. In external coping, one is capable of managing the problem while internal coping is defined as the regulations of emotional responses. Hence coping helps nurses to perceive and adapt to workplace stresses. Shift work has a greater impact on a nurse's life since it helps in managing challenges of shift work, therefore, improves work-life outcomes. This can provide valuable information to the nurses on practical ways to negotiate temporal changes to the professional and home lives of nurses working under shift work. Inexperienced nurses can benefit from self-copying skills by protecting themselves from some of the impacts of an adverse work environment. (Akkus et al., 2019)

Work shifts may cause physiologic effects to the new graduate nurses. Some of the effects are changes in the rhythm of the core temperature, various hormonal levels, immune functioning, and activity rest cycle. Thyroid hormones have several effects on the immune system like hindering the growth hormones and metabolism. Thyroid hormones activities diverse metabolic activities in most of the body organs. One main effect of this metabolic reaction is that it increases the rate of heat production in the body which will have the following effects on the body: lipid metabolism which stimulates fat mobilization, which causes an increase in the high concentration of fatty acids in the plasma. Secondly, thyroid hormones will stimulate all the aspects of carbohydrate metabolism including enhancement of the level of sugar in the body. (Hegney et al,.2017)

Difficulty maintaining enough level of day-to-day activities. Nurses may have several duties to perform within the stipulated time, hence they will not be able to cope up with the task given and finish it at the recommended time of the day. Prolong working hours may confuse the new graduate nurse due to lack of enough experience in the field of nursing.Recovery processes that the nurses undertake after working on the night shift only promote restorations but not the health of the nurse. Nursing workers are among the professionals who suffer a lot in terms of balancing daily activities.This may lead to rush in performing the duties hence may cause dangerous damage to the patient when the nurse is attending to him or her. When there is congestion in the hospital, it will be very difficult to attend to all the patients due to workload in the hospital and lack of enough experience to perform a given task. This might lead to confusion and cause serious injuriesto the patient (Min et al,.2019)

In summary, nurses with rotating night schedules need much attention due to the higher risk of their health and job satisfaction. The body governing nurses' union should strictly follow and adhere to the rules governing the employment policy of newly recruited health workers. Hence nurses should be given humble time to do their duties according to their level of performing a given task. New graduate nurses should be given enough directions on the correct path they should cooperate with their daily activities. Shift work on nurses has a great impact on society.

Recommendations

New graduate nurses should not be given many duties to perform since they don't have enough experience of performing a given task. Working for long working hours may lead to tiredness and causes a lack of sleep for the nurse. There will be some negative impacts on the patient if the nurses don't have enough sleep. Environmental factors should be considered when allocating duties to the new graduate nurses. This will give the nurses a favorable environment to work in.