Recently a study was carried out amongst 23,000 registered nurses in California, with 65% of the sample working shifts up to 13 hours a day. The 3 year study revealed that nurses who worked shifts longer than 10 hours a day, were up to 2.5 times more likely to experience intense dissatisfaction and sensations related to burn-out, than those who worked shorter-shifts.
In hospitals in which the nurses worked the longest shifts, a high percentage of patients felt that the nurses were unable to conduct their tasks and responsibilities effectively, and that they were unable to communicate articulately with them.
This should be a cause of concern for professions in which work-performance is directly linked to the care, comfort and safety of people. Whilst, caring professions have long been associated with long and often, anti-social shifts, the recent overhaul and reduction of medical services caused by the economic downturn is making the situation worse. Researchers have recommended that the number of consecutive hours worked by medical staff should me limited and that managers should closely monitor the amount of hours worked. Working long hours is also partly the result of doing overtime, which is often undertaken to boost low wages when living costs escalate.
However, it has been often proven that working long-hours can have a detrimental impact upon work-productivity, increasing quantity- but rapidly diminishing quality. The research concludes that it is the responsibility of management to facilitate manageable work-hours and that failure to do so will lead to further incidents of burn-out in the work-place.