Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine

Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Health effects of shift work and extended hours of work

Work involving long hours or abnormal night-day schedules has been in existence for centuries. There is evidence to suggest that such schedules are here to stay, for one reason or another, for one in five workers. The main physiological consequence of such shift schedules is disruption of circadian rhythm which can have a deleterious effect on performance, sleep patterns, accident rates, mental health, and cardiovascular mortality. Reproductive outcome effects may be linked to disruption of menstrual cycles. Individual issues such as sex, age, and personality are also important.

Coping with these potentially harmful work schedules involves helping people to cope and by designing workplace environments and shift scheduling schemes that lead to the least disruption to mental, physical, and social wellbeing.

Read more:
Health effects of shift work and extended hours of work

Source: Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Image credits: Jill Colbourne

Follow "Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine " on:


https://www.facebook.com/LaboratoryEQAS
https://twitter.com/LaboratoryEQAS
https://plus.google.com/100408138227362094524/posts
http://www.pinterest.com/labmed/medical-laboratory-and-biomedical-science/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jwahlstedt
http://clinical-laboratory.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default