For hospital nurses, working 12 hours or longer is associated with adverse outcomes, including nurse burnout, that may endanger patients and nurses, a new study has shown.

Chiara Dall'Ora, MSc, from the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (Wess*x), University of Southampton, United Kingdom, and colleagues present their findings in an article published online August 23 in BMJ Open.

"Shifts of 12 [hours] or longer have become increasingly common for nurses in hospitals in some countries in Europe. This change is mainly driven by managers' perceptions of improved efficiency from reducing the number of nurse shifts a day, therefore resulting in fewer handovers between shifts, less interruptions to clinical care provision and increased productivity due to a reduction in the overlap between two shifts," the authors explain. "From the nurse perspective, longer shifts offer a potential to benefit from a compressed working week, with fewer work days and more days off-work, lower commuting costs and increased flexibility."

However, some experts are concerned that long shifts negatively affect nurses' well-being, job satisfaction, and plans to leave their job. To find out, Dall'Ora and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional survey of 31,627 registered nurses in 2170 general medical or surgical units from 488 hospitals across 12 European countries.