Whilst shift work offers advantages such as additional money, off peak holidays and commuting and time off during the day it can also impact on our physiological and psychological health and cause accidents.
Night work combined with unsuitable roster designs can adversely impact on the health and safety of shift workers and cause accidents. For example, work patterns that include regular runs of more than 5 consecutive 8 hour nightshifts or 3 consecutive 12 hour night shifts are considered unsafe.
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Such rosters make workers less alert, particularly between the hours of 2 and 6 in the morning, risking fatigue, lack of awareness, concentration loss, slower response times, impaired judgment, and increased error rates.
In other words it is often very difficult to think through a complex process when you are half asleep.
Rotating shift workers in particular are always trying to adjust to changing work times and at greater risk of:
The Solution
In recent years much has been done to improve the physiological and psychological effects of shift work. Many of these issue can be mitigated by effective roster designs that and address issues such as efficiency, operating costs, and flexibility and provide for the health safety and social amenity of shift workers.
Researchers today generally agree that roster designs that include Short Cycles, Rapid Turn Arounds, and Long Breaks are fundamental to safe rostering.
For example: 12 hour shift patterns such as DDNNOOOO and 8 hour rapid rotation patterns such as: DDAANNOOO.