The Change from 8-hr to 10-hr Shifts at an Underground Mine: Identifying the Effects on Sleep, Performance, Safety, and Social Interactions, and Implementing a Workplace Health Promotion Program
| Principal investigator(s): | Lawrence W. Reinish (Toronto Hospital and the University Health Network) |
| Co-investigator(s): | J. Beyers, L. Picard (Sudbury & District Health Unit); R.J. Heslegrave (University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital); C.M. Shapiro (University of Toronto and Toronto Western Hospital) |
| Sponsoring Institution: | University Health Network |
For more information about this study, please contact Dr. Lawrence Reinish: Lawrence.Reinish@uhn.on.ca
Results
Ten-hour day shift workers reported greater performance impairment and less sleep than eight-hour-day shift workers. Ten-hour night shift workers reported fewer problems with job performance, more refreshing sleep and fewer driving difficulties than eight-hour-night shift workers. On the 10-hour night shift, objective performance measures were similar or better than on the 10-hour day shift, and objective measures of sleep were equivalent, but with increased performance error rate on the night shift.
Conclusions
These data suggest that a night shift that does not encompass the entire night period may have significant benefits to shiftworkers, although possibly at a cost to subjective sleep and subjective and objective performance on the day shift of the 10-hour shift schedule.
Objectives
To examine the impact of the change from an 8-hour shift schedule to a 10-hour shift schedule on underground mine workers; to better understand the types of problems facing shiftworkers and to further intervention strategies by analysing the 1996/97 Ontario Health Survey (OHS’96) data and reviewing existing workplace health promotion intervention literature.
Methods
Workers and their partners were surveyed by questionnaires before, and one-month and one-year after the shift schedule change implementation. A subgroup of workers was randomly selected for objective measurements of sleep and job performance one year after the change to the 10-hour shift schedule.
Publications:
Heslegrave, R.J., Reinish, L.,Beyers J., & Hall, G. (2000). Innovative approaches to extended working hours can benefit workers. Zeitschrift fur Arbeitswissenschaft 5:318-323.
Heslegrave, R.J., Reinish, L., Beyers J., Picard, L., Horbul, B., Huterer, N. , Jovanovic, D., Sabanadzovic, S., Kayumov, L., Chung, S., Flint, A., Hall, G., Shapiro, C. (2000). The differential impact of extended 10-hour shifts on day and night shifts. In S. Hornberger, P. Knauth, G. Costa, and S. Folkard (Eds.), Shiftwork in the 21st Century: Challenges for research and practice. Frankfurt, Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris, Vienna: Peter Lang, pp. 67-72
Hossain J.L., Reinish L.W., Kayumov L., Bhuiya P., Shapiro C.M. "Underlying sleep pathology may cause chronic high fatigue in shift-workers." Journal of Sleep Research (2003) 12:223-230.
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