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12-hour shifts have long been a point of concern in the nursing community. This subject draws

me in because there is ongoing uncertainty on whether it is safe. Both the nurses' and the

patients' perspectives on this are relevant. Twelve-hour shifts for nurses should not be permitted

because they are extremely taxing physically and mentally, and the length of the shifts may pose

a risk to the patients.

Staffing costs must be reduced, care quality must improve, work organization must be more

efficient, and nurse recruitment and retention must be improved. Due to worldwide nursing

shortages and difficulty retaining staff, long shifts for nursing staff (registered nurses and nursing

assistants) working in hospitals have been widely adopted. Because long changes reduce the

daily number of transitions from three to two, many assume that long shifts improve productivity

by removing one handover and staff overlap. However, whether staffing levels are adequate

when more long dresses are used is still being determined. While studies have examined the

effects of 12-hour shifts on nurses' health and productivity, does it benefit nurses and patients?

12-hour shifts do not lower staffing expenses, harming productivity and efficiency outcomes like

absenteeism and missed nursing care. In addition, nurses who work 12-hour shifts do not

perform more safely than those who work shorter shifts, and data suggests that the increased

weariness and sleepiness may harm the delivery of safe care (Dall’Ora et al. 2022, p. 4).
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According to Dall'Ora et al. (2022), initial analyses often concluded that the standard of care had

also improved, even though the empirical data at the time broadly spoke of more excellent

continuity of care because patients were seeing the same nurse throughout the day. Despite the

benefits that 12-hour shifts would provide, nurses' productivity and well-being need to be

clarified. Compared to nurses working short shifts, nurses working long shifts had less emotional

weariness and were happier with their schedules and jobs. Otherwise, several observational

studies can negatively affect staff performance in care quality management. Many people doubt

the necessity of 12-hour shifts in light of this evidence. The widespread adoption of 12-hour

shifts may indicate that healthcare administrators value them or that some nurses enjoy them. A

critical question is whether 12-hour shifts benefit the workplace if they are commonly used

despite data suggesting they may harm workers (Dall’Ora et al. 2022, p. 5). As a result,

analyzing potential benefits of lengthy shifts in hospital nursing, including how they may help

the healthcare provider save money on staffing expenses, organize care more effectively, deliver

care, and attract and retain more nurses.

Staffing expenses have limited empirical data on 12-hour shifts, personnel deployment, and

related expenditures. For example, 12-hour modifications maintain nurse-to-patient ratios while

requiring fewer daily nursing hours. In that case, one will anticipate decreased daily nursing

hours due to the increased use of long shifts. However, research revealed no decrease in daily

nursing hours onwards where more 12-hour shifts were deployed daily. (Dall’Ora et al.2022, p.
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6). Additionally, even though more nurses performed 12-hour shifts, nurse staffing expenses per

patient day did not decrease.

Organizational care, despite the difficulty in defining efficiency in healthcare, the well-

investigated nursing notion of missed care offers a way to investigate how to shift patterns affect

effective care management. Missed nursing care, also known as incomplete care, rationed care,

or care left undone, is care that was started but still needs to be finished during a worked shift.

Because nurses may need to pace themselves to retain energy during the change, an association

between long dresses and missing care is at least conceivable. As the transition goes on, nurses

may become less active, either as a direct result of growing exhaustion or as a purposeful

countermeasure. For example, after implementing 12-hour shifts, nurses observed that because of

the intensity of the job over such a long time, they needed to finish several care activities.

The level of quality care has questioned the effect that long hours would have on nurses'

cognitive and task performance during the shift in response to their implementation. Working

successive 12-hour shifts has been linked to increased weariness, sleepiness, and shorter sleep

durations, which may impact performance and safety. While research has found that long

changes result in increased errors and diminished cognitive performance, recent studies have

generally used objective measures and have mainly examined the performance of nurses working

12-hour shifts with no comparison and are, therefore, largely uninformative (Dall’Ora et al.
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2022, p. 5). An experiment comparing cognitive errors between 28 nurses working eight and 12-

hour shifts did not find a statistically significant difference in cognitive function. While more

substantial performance impairments caused by 12-hour shifts for nurses are probably given their

effects on fatigue and sleep, the current evidence is limited due to the need for more objective

shift and outcome data.

Attracting and retaining more nurses is quantitative evidence showing that 12-hour shifts reduce

nurse vacancies but increase turnover. Such a finding would be consistent with a positive effect

on recruitment but a negative one on retention, but it would be wrong to draw too strong an

inference from such limited evidence. Differences in recruitment and retention may be due to the

nature of nursing work in different units. The current study needs to report how long 12-h shifts

were adopted before their evaluation and whether nursing staff supported or requested them

(Dall’Ora et al. 2022, p. 5). Responding to shift pattern preferences may help recruit and retain

personnel. Some discrete choice experiment research has found that nurses favor flexible shift

patterns and other working qualities.

Additionally, 12-hour shift nurses can have less access to educational opportunities than nurses

who work shorter shifts. Finally, although some nurses prefer 12-hour shifts, research shows that

this shift pattern does not result in a rise in recruitment, with studies showing that nurses who

work long shifts are more likely to desire to quit their position. In conclusion, the value
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arguments when 12-hour shifts were implemented have little to no validity. Even though 12-hour

shifts might be here to stay, people in charge of putting schedules in place for hospital nurses

must acknowledge and accept the constraints, such as decreased productivity and efficiency.

Reference
Thompson, B. J. (2019). Does work-induced fatigue accumulate across three compressed 12-

hour shifts in hospital nurses and aides? Plos One, 14(2), 1–15.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.02911715

Dall’Ora, C., Ejebu, O.-Z., & Griffiths, P. (2022). Because they are worth it? A discussion paper

on the value of 12-H shifts for hospital nursing. Human Resources For Health, 20(1), 1–7.

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-022-00731-2