Nurses are the largest group of health professionals, providing vital care 24/7. DHB-based nurses working in acute settings account for approximately 40% of all Registered and Enrolled Nurses.
Have your say and keep up to date with our 3-year project that aims to combine new science and your nursing knowledge and expertise to better manage fatigue in New Zealand hospitals. Together we have an opportunity to create positive change!
When it comes to fatigue and shift work, there are three facts you need to know:
1. We function best with unrestricted sleep at night.
2. Fatigue is impairment caused by not enough sleep, by staying awake too long and by trying to sleep and work in the wrong parts of the circadian body clock cycle.
3. Shift work is any work pattern that requires you to be awake when you would normally be asleep, on a day when you’re free to choose your schedule.
All three of these physiological factors can reduce your alertness and ability to perform your job safely, as well as your ability to get home healthy and safe.
Check out our fatigue facts section below for more information.
The Draft National Code of Practice for Managing Fatigue and Shift Work in Hospital-Based Nursing was released on 10 Dec 2018[more]
The Safer Nursing 24/7 Project has released a Draft National Code of Practice for Managing Fatigue and Shift Work in Hospital-Based Nursing for a 3-month period of public consultation from 10 December 2018. The Safer Nursing 24/7 project is funded by the Health Research Council and includes researchers from Massey University and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, with an Advisory Group with broad representation from across the sector. The draft Code has been informed by a 2016-2017 national survey of nurses’ work patterns.
Sector knowledge and experience is a vital component of this new approach, which also draws on the latest fatigue science and international best practice. The aim of the consultation process is to ensure that the final Code of Practice is understandable, effective and practical for implementation in New Zealand public hospitals.
The draft Code of Practice can be accessed here. We look forward to your feedback.
Image: stanciuc © 123RF.com
We are nearing the end of our quantitative analyses for the nationwide survey and wanted to share our results with our Advisory Group...[more]
We are nearing the end of our quantitative analyses for the nationwide survey and wanted to share our results with our Advisory Group to get their feedback. We had a fantastic Advisory Group meeting on 29 May at Massey University in Wellington, which helped us to further interpret our study findings, gave us a few more ideas for analyses and set us on our way to completing the survey report.
We still have a lot of work to do, but are making good progress. The next steps for the project are to:
- complete our final analyses and the survey report, and then share our results with the wider nursing community. We hope to travel to DHBs around New Zealand to share our findings with the nursing community so stay tuned for more news.
- prepare scientific papers on the survey findings for publication
- complete qualitative analyses of the open comments in the survey
- develop the Code of Practice for managing shift work and fatigue in nursing
- develop educational materials for managing shift work and fatigue for nurses and their managers
We're almost at the end of our data collection period. Karyn O'Keeffe talks to Nursing Review about our progress so far.
