Making Family Under A Shiftwork Schedule: Air Force Security Guards And Their Wives

Through 90 in-depth interviews with 44 rotating shiftworkers and their spouses, this study examines how couples adjust their routines in order to interact as a family unit. We suggest that their views of marital roles are a critical force shaping their practices of daily family life. Wives, even when employed, are responsible for coordinating the individual schedules of family members to match that of the shift-working husband. Wives pay a price for this adjustment work in the form of biological, and emotional symptoms similar to those previously reported only for shiftworkers. Despite their efforts to be providers, husbands pay a price in terms of guilt and anger when work demands limit their ability to fully participate in family life. Further, dual-earner couples rely on husbands ( father care ) and informal arrangements to cover child care for economical and social reasons, not simply to provide husbands with an opportunity to interact with children. Yet, despite higher levels of father care, traditional gender roles have not been altered in that working wives still retain primary responsibility for children

Rodent models to study the metabolic effects of shiftwork in humans

Our current 24-h society requires an increasing number of employees to work nightshifts with millions of people worldwide working during the evening or night. Clear associations have been found between shiftwork and the risk to develop metabolic health problems, such as obesity. An increasing number of studies suggest that the underlying mechanism includes disruption of the rhythmically organized body physiology. Normally, daily 24-h rhythms in physiological processes are controlled by the central clock in the brain in close collaboration with peripheral clocks present throughout the body. Working schedules of shiftworkers greatly interfere with these normal daily rhythms by exposing the individual to contrasting inputs, i.e., at the one hand (dim)light exposure at night, nightly activity and eating and at the other hand daytime sleep and reduced light exposure. Several different animal models are being used to mimic shiftwork and study the mechanism responsible for the observed correlation between shiftwork and metabolic diseases. In this review we aim to provide an overview of the available animal studies with a focus on the four most relevant models that are being used to mimic human shiftwork: altered timing of (1) food intake, (2) activity, (3) sleep, or (4) light exposure. For all studies we scored whether and how relevant metabolic parameters, such as bodyweight, adiposity and plasma glucose were affected by the manipulation. In the discussion, we focus on differences between shiftwork models and animal species (i.e., rat and mouse). In addition, we comment on the complexity of shiftwork as an exposure and the subsequent difficulties when using animal models to investigate this condition. In view of the added value of animal models over human cohorts to study the effects and mechanisms of shiftwork, we conclude with recommendations to improve future research protocols to study the causality between shiftwork and metabolic health problems using animal models

“Breaking” the Emergency Department: Does the Culture of Emergency Medicine Present a Barrier to Self-Care?

Introduction: Our goal was to critically examine emergency physician’s (EP) beliefs about taking breaks for self-care on shift. Our operational definition of a break for self-care included time not engaging in direct patient care, eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or leaving a clinical area for a mental break. Using focus groups, the study aimed to accomplish the following: 1) identify barriers to why residents and faculty at our academic center may not take breaks in the emergency department; 2) generate hypotheses for empirical testing; and 3) generate solutions to include in a departmental breaks initiative.Methods: We convened eight focus groups comprised separately of resident and faculty physicians. Group discussion was guided by eight questions representing a priori themes. The groups were recorded for transcription and subjected to a “cut-and-sort” process. Six themes were identified by consensus after independent review by three of the co-authors, which were confirmed by participant validation.Results: We identified six themes that represented the pooled outcomes of both resident and faculty focus groups: 1) Physiological needs affect clinical performance, 2) EPs share beliefs around taking breaks that center on productivity, patient safety and the dichotomy of strength/weakness, 3) when taking breaks EPs fear worst-case scenarios, 4) breaking is a learned skill, 5) culture change is needed to allow EPs to engage in self-care; and 6) a flexible, individualized approach to breaking is necessary. Our central finding was that productivity and patient safety are of key importance to EPs when considering whether to take a break for self-care. We identified a dichotomy with the concept of strength related to productivity/patient safety, and the concept of weakness related to self-care.Conclusion: The current practice culture of emergency medicine and the organization of our unique work environment may present barriers to physicians attempting to engage in self-care

Sleep characteristics modify the association between genetic predisposition to obesity and anthropometric measurements in 119,679 UK Biobank participants

Background - Obesity is a multifactorial condition influenced by genetics, lifestyle and environment. Objective - To investigate whether the association between a validated genetic profile risk score for obesity (GPRS-obesity) with body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) was modified by sleep characteristics. Design - This study included cross-sectional data from 119,859 white European adults, aged 37-73 years, participating on the UK Biobank. Interactions between GPRS-obesity, and sleep characteristics (sleep duration, chronotype, day napping, and shift work) in their effects on BMI and WC were investigated. Results - The GPRS-obesity was associated with BMI (β:0.57 kg.m-2 per standard deviation (SD) increase in GPRS, [95%CI:0.55, 0.60]; P=6.3x10-207) and WC (β:1.21 cm, [1.15, 1.28]; P=4.2x10-289). There were significant interactions between GPRS-obesity and a variety of sleep characteristics in their relationship with BMI (P-interaction <0.05). In participants who slept <7 hrs or >9 hrs daily, the effect of GPRS-obesity on BMI was stronger (β:0.60 [0.54, 0.65] and 0.73 [0.49, 0.97] kg.m-2 per SD increase in GPRS, respectively) than in normal length sleepers (7-9 hours; β:0.52 [0.49, 0.55] kg.m-2 per SD). A similar pattern was observed for shiftworkers (β:0.68 [0.59, 0.77] versus 0.54 [0.51, 0.58] kg.m-2 for non-shiftworkers) and for night-shiftworkers (β:0.69 [0.56, 0.82] versus 0.55 [0.51, 0.58] kg.m-2 for non-night- shiftworkers), for those taking naps during the day (β:0.65 [0.52, 0.78] versus 0.51 [0.48, 0.55] kg.m-2 for those who never/rarely had naps) and for those with a self-reported evening chronotype (β:0.72 [0.61, 0.82] versus β:0.52 [0.47, 0.57] kg.m-2 for morning chronotype). Similar findings were obtained using WC as the outcome. Conclusions – This study shows that the association between genetic risk for obesity and phenotypic adiposity measures is exacerbated by adverse sleeping characteristics

Job-related stress and burnout

Occupational stress is a topic of substantial interest to organizational researchers and managers, as well as society at large. Stress arising from work conditions can be pervasive and significant in its impact on individuals, their families and organizations. There is also a widespread belief that management of job stress is a key factor for enhancing individual performance on the job, hence increasing organizational effectiveness. Sethi and Schuler 1984 outlined four major reasons why job stress and coping have become prominent issues: a concern for individual employee health and well-being; b the financial impact on organizations including days lost due to stress-related illness; c organizational effectiveness; and d legal obligations on employers to provide safe and healthy working environments

Towards a theory of capacity utilization: shiftwork and the workweek of capital

Labor productivity

Effects of circadian rhythm phase alteration on physiological and psychological variables: Implications to pilot performance (including a partially annotated bibliography)

The effects of environmental synchronizers upon circadian rhythmic stability in man and the deleterious alterations in performance and which result from changes in this stability are points of interest in a review of selected literature published between 1972 and 1980. A total of 2,084 references relevant to pilot performance and circadian phase alteration are cited and arranged in the following categories: (1) human performance, with focus on the effects of sleep loss or disturbance and fatigue; (2) phase shift in which ground based light/dark alteration and transmeridian flight studies are discussed; (3) shiftwork; (4)internal desynchronization which includes the effect of evironmental factors on rhythmic stability, and of rhythm disturbances on sleep and psychopathology; (5) chronotherapy, the application of methods to ameliorate desynchronization symptomatology; and (6) biorythm theory, in which the birthdate based biorythm method for predicting aircraft accident susceptability is critically analyzed. Annotations are provided for most citations

Eurofound: The First 40 Years

[Excerpt] Manifested early on in the first social action programme in 1973, this unrelenting commitment to defining a social face to this new community of countries continued with the establishment of what later became ‘Eurofound’ in Dublin shortly afterwards. A tripartite European Agency to provide data and analysis to help shape policy in social and work-related matters was a bold and defining element in this move towards locking the social dimension into the development and growth of the ever-expanding Union. Throughout these years, Eurofound has continued to contribute to this early and strategic vision of a social Europe. By the late 1970s, work on wage systems was already a core part of the Agency’s activities. Other early activities focused on new forms of work organisation, shiftwork and physical and psychological constraints at work. In the 1980s, unsurprisingly, the focus was on the long-term unemployed and in 1990 work on the first pan-European survey of working conditions was under way. As the Union has grown, so too has the scope of the Agency’s work, taking on responsibility for monitoring and analysing employment change via the European Monitoring Centre on Change, and today its scope encompasses 28 Member States and several candidate countries and observer states. The sixth series of the working conditions survey covering 34 countries is now in preparation, while surveys on quality of life and on company practices have similarly evolved over time. Comparative analysis across countries continues to be Eurofound’s key contribution in many areas, drawing also on input from the network of European correspondents. Meanwhile, original research has made significant input to several central policy debates. Most recently, it was Eurofound’s calculation of the estimated cost to Europe’s economy of the exclusion of the 14 million young people not in employment, education or training (about 1.2% of GDP per annum) that galvanised action for the Youth Guarantee now being implemented across Europe