Comparison of general health status and sleep quality between nurses with fixed working shifts and nurses with rotating working shifts

Nurses are vulnerable to various sleep disorders because of the nature of their job. If nurses do not experience a good general health, they will not be able to do their job (patient care) well. We conducted a descriptive-comparative study in 180 nurses that were selected with the stratified sampling method who have been working in different work shift hours in teaching hospitals. We used PSQI and GHQ-28 questionnaire for collecting data. The study results showed a statistically significant difference in sleep quality and general health of nurses based on two questionnaires (p=0.01; p=0.05) respectively. According to our findings we suggest fixed working shifts versus rotating one for nurses to reduce the side effects.