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ObjectiveTo carry out a survey data collection from health care workers in Brazil, Croatia, Poland, Ukraine and the USA with two primary goals: (1) to provide information about which aspects of well-being are most likely to need attention when shiftwork management solutions are being developed, and (2) to explore whether nations are likely to differ with respect to the impacts of night work on the well-being of workers involved in health care work. MethodsThe respondents from each nation were sorted into night worker and non-night worker groups. Worker perceptions of being physically tired, mentally tired, and tense at the end of the workday were examined. Subjective reports of perceived felt age were also studied. For each of these four dependent variables, an ANCOVA analysis was carried out. Hours worked per week, stability of weekly work schedule, and chronological age were the covariates for these analyses. ResultsThe results clearly support the general proposal that nations differ significantly in worker perceptions of well-being. In addition, perceptions of physical and mental tiredness at the end of the workday were higher for night workers. For the perception of being physically tired at the end of a workday, the manner and degree to which the night shift impacts the workers varies by nation. Conclusions Additional research is needed to determine if the nation and work schedule differences observed are related to differences in job tasks, work schedule structure, off-the-job variables, and/or other worker demographic variables. Resumo Objetivo

The aim of the study was to investigate chronological and subjective age and gender differences in terms of the physical, mental, and social demands of work. Subjects, 88 women and 25 men, were workers in a medical setting who completed the Survey of Health Care Professionals. Subjects' reports of effort required by their work, tiredness resulting from their work, and personal skills needed to complete their work were used to assess the physical, mental, and social demands of work. Subjective age measures included cognitive age, desired age, and comparative age. Results showed that, compared to men, women reported being more tense as a result of the work. Age differences were found in the physical and mental skills required by the work. Older workers had lower estimates of their own skills than younger workers. Three measures of subjective age showed different patterns of relationships with aspects of work demands.

There is little doubt that productivity and safety can be impaired on the night shift. Two main factors have been identified that may be responsible for this. On the one hand, the circadian rhythm in performance on at least simple tasks is at a low ebb at night, and adjusts only slowly over a span of night shifts. On the other, the day sleeps of shift workers taken between night shifts are of a reduced duration, and thus a cumulative sleep debt may accrue over successive night shifts. The former thus predicts that productivity should improve over a span of night duty, while the latter predicts that it should decline. We have examined the productivity of 53 female shift workers, and the sleeping habits of a sub-sample of 30 of them, on a weekly rotating shift system in order to assess the relative contribution of these two factors. Our results suggest that circadian adjustment to night work is the dominant factor for the first three or four successive nights shifts, but that sleep deprivation effects may then result in a decrease in productivity over subsequent nights. They also indicate that sleep deprivation, but not circadian adjustment, may affect the productivity of some workers when on the morning shift.

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