On-call vs rostered night shifts — what’s better for sleep and cognition?
Researchers compared two kinds of shift patterns - a longer, more sporadic on-call shift or a series of consecutive nights.
Night shifts are an inescapable fact of life for trainee doctors, but now a study reveals that a set overnight roster results in better quality sleep than a traditional 24-hour on-call shift.
Even though both groups had a similar amount of sleep, a series of overnights was linked with better wellbeing, sleep patterns and cognition, the authors say.
They gave sleep trackers to 96 medical interns in a Singapore hospital, who were attached to departments which followed either a traditional on-call schedule or a set 12-hour overnight shift pattern — called a float schedule.
“The float schedule was associated with more regular sleep patterns and better self-reported sleep quality compared with the on-call schedule,” the researchers said.
