The Effect of Night Shift To The Physical Health and Personal Life of Nurses in Sta. Ana Hospital (Manila)
The Effect of Night Shift To The Physical Health and Personal Life of Nurses in Sta. Ana Hospital (Manila)
The Effect of Night Shift To The Physical Health and Personal Life of Nurses in Sta. Ana Hospital (Manila)
A Research Proposal
Submitted to:
by
Moraleja, Tisha B.
INTRODUCTION
This research will circulate mainly on the different variables regarding the effect
on the physical health as well as the personal life of nurses who work the night shift.
People who are in the healthcare organizations often have to provide patient care
throughout the day. Long work hours increase the risk for short sleep duration and in
their physical health. It may also increase the risk for reduced performance on the job,
obesity, injuries, and other range of chronic diseases. Scientific evidence is growing,
stating that adequate sleep is a biological need for life similar to the need to eat and drink
and is critical to maintain life and health and to work safely (Everson, 2009). Based
from an article between the periods of 1985–1990 and 2004–2007, the percentage of
healthcare workers reporting 6 or less hours of sleep each day (a level considered too
short by sleep experts) increased from 28% to 32% (Luckhaupt, Tak & Calvert, 2010).
As stated by Nightly Nurse (2019), registered nurses can work for about 5-8
hour days, 4-10 hour days or even 3-12 hour days shifts per week. They may even
Working in shorter time (e.g 5-8 rotation hours) is a lot comparable than
laboring in several hours or overworking. Lampert (2016) claimed that nurses can spend
much more of their time for other activities after completing their shift hours. In addition
to that, they can also have the time to relax or meditate themselves, have time to explore
or learn something outside their workplaces. Working for long hours may affect the
performance and the affability of a healthcare provider especially nurses since they are
the ones who mostly do the actions or interventions inside the hospital. It can also lead to
confusions with their health records or care plan, sleep deprivation can also affect the
There are different aspects that may affect when you work full time. Most jobs
or occupations are stressful and one of them is nursing. Tackling the effect on the
Lorenzo (2016) night shift specifically is one of the reasons for nurses’ sleeping
disorders and undesirable changes in biological functions which can negatively impact
their work performance. Stress can be an implication to health problems that is visible in
the physicality of a person. For nurses, stress has an impact on the quality of service and
care for the patients they attend to. Nurses working night-shift increased worldwide in
the past decade and some of them experienced some health problems like fatigue, sleep
family life and tends to restrict nurses’ social and leisure activities. Women, especially
mothers, they have a role to play at home such as doing household chores and taking care
of their children and family. Instead of doing such things, they tend to compromise their
sleep and prepare for the next shift. As nurses work night shift, it causes imbalance
status of the nurse and other demographic characteristics, to ponder on further would be
their “possible” psychosocial stress or social inavailability in general. Ferri, et al. (2016)
stated that one of the several factors that can negatively affect a night shift nurse is their
psychosocial stress. Psychosocial stress is caused by high forms of external stressors like
social threats, social exclusion, or the need to be affiliated with human to human
interaction (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004; Panksepp, 2003; Tossani, 2013), which most
definitely are skills needed to be an efficient nurse. The said factors are what the
researchers aim to prove throughout the research which would be based on the extracted
and received responses from the night shift nurses from Sta. Ana Hospital, Manila in
particular.
Nurses can often feel as though there are not enough hours in the day to
complete all their tasks. Nurses should be good at time management. When a patient is in
urgent need of attention, nurses to-do-list can change rapidly. The hectic pace of this job
is one of the reasons why nurses get stressed out. Also, nurses have personal life besides
Since the specific specialization inclined is nursing, the aim of this study is to
better understand and to find out the effects of night-shift to the physical health and
Main Problem
This research study aims to find out how the physical health and personal life of
nurses in Sta. Ana Hospital (Manila) could be affected by their shift, particularly night
shift. It will be conducted throughout the first and second semester of academic year
2019-2020.
Sub-problems
questions:
1. What is the effect of working night shift to the physical health of the nurses
considering their
1.1 Age;
1.2 Sex;
2. What is the effect of working night shift to the personal life of the nurses
considering their:
2.1 Age;
2.2 Sex;
3. What are the possible basis of comparison regarding the effects to the said
aspects, considering the different demographic characteristics of nurses?
Significance of the Study
The future findings of this research is to let people know about the effect of
night shift to the physical health and personal life of nurses. Issues they experience that
affect their social life negatively and positively. The findings could offer contributions to
other health care providers. Furthermore, it can also benefit to the following:
Nursing Students. This study would be beneficial in a way that it would serve as a
platform of thought of what to expect when they enter the job. It would help them
Healthcare Providers. The essence of this study is to help the other healthcare
providers, for them to be aware what are the effects of working over time in their
Family of Night-shift Nurses. This study will be helpful as they will be informed
on what are the possible changes in the physical health and emotional life nurses in
their family.
Future Researchers. This study can help future researchers in a way that it could be
nursing field.
Scope and Limitation
This study focuses only about the effect of the physical health and personal life
of nurses. Furthermore, this study will only be focusing on the nurses coming from Sta.
Ana Hospital in Manila. The focal point of the study is to know how they manage their
time, physical health and their personal life despite of their long work hours.
Nonetheless this study has a limitation wherein the researchers will disregard
the other health care providers inside the hospital and will only focus on the nurses. Also,
the study will not discuss any further that are not related to the effect of night shift to the
nurses.