Comparison of the correlation between sleep quality and quality of life of nurses in rotating shifts and fixed shifts

Due to the nature of nursing practice, nurses face a variety of stressful situations in the workplace. They are at risk of insomnia since they work irregularly in the morning, evening and night shifts. The irregular sleep-wake pattern in nurses decreases their sleep quality and sleep duration, and also leads to their poor occupational performance. The present study was conducted to determine the correlation between sleep quality and general health of nurses affiliated to Saveh University of Medical Sciences.

The present descriptive study was conducted on 200 employed nurses. The data were collected through a questionnaire covering the participants’ demographic information, the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Finally, the collected data were analyzed through SPSS, version 21, software.

The results indicated a significant inverse correlation between sleep quality and total life quality scores of the participants, so that their life quality decreased as the quality of their sleep decreased.  Moreover, the results showed a significant difference between sleep quality of nurses with a fixed shift schedule and those with rotating shifts (p=0.001), so that nurses working the same shift had higher sleep quality.

The results of this study signified that reduced sleep quality of nurses could affect different aspects of their life quality.