Research Recommendations

2.1 Researchers partner with governments, professional associations, regulatory bodies, unions, health-service organizations and educational institutions to conduct research regarding the relationship between fatigue, workload, work hours and the amount of sleep needed to provide safe patient care. The goals are to: (a) increase understanding of the relationship between nurse fatigue and patient safety; (b) identify measures to decrease fatigue; and (c) reduce the impact of fatigue on patient and nurse safety.

Researchers work together across professions to achieve the above goals through studying:

a) Hours worked, 12-hours shifts, on-call patterns and intervals between shifts worked by nurses at all levels (e.g. staff nurses, managers, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, etc., in a variety of health-care settings).

b) The gap in provincial infrastructure, to accurately monitor nurses’ working hours, as many nurses hold positions in multiple organizations across health-care sectors.

c) The prevalence and incidence of fatigue based on gender, marital status, lifestyle and age.

d) The efficacy of programs to determine, assess and mitigate fatigue in health-care settings.

e) The nature of mitigating factors influencing fatigue in the workplace, including part-time employment and nurses working multiple jobs.