Associations Between Adverse Working Hours and Nurses’ Sickness Absence: A Longitudinal Analysis of E-Roster Data

Introduction: In hospitals, nurses frequently have to work in shifts that cover the 24-hour day. There is a wealth of evidence that links shift work with negative outcomes for nurses, and as such, health organisations have a duty to promote safe working hours and monitor the wellbeing of their nursing workforce. One useful outcome for monitoring includes staff sickness absence, as documented by hospital administrative records. While previous research analyzing records of shifts and sickness absence have shown increased rates when nurses are working certain shift types, there is a gap in understanding the effects of more complex shift patterns, particularly those that occur over multiple days (e.g., working long and/or night shifts consecutively, having fewer than 48 hours rest between ending a night shift and starting a day shift, and frequent shift rotations).