Staffing and Nursing Fatigue

2 Does anyone know of any journal articles or research studies on nursing fatigue? Thanks!

ETA: This isn't homework. I am not a student. I am looking for credible studies that I can use to help implement evidence based staffing protocols for my facility.

Also, if you don't know of any, but work at a facility that has staffing policies to prevent nursing fatigue, what are they and how are they working at your hospital? Last edit by TheMrsRN on Feb 22, '11 : Reason: Clarification
Have you tried researching the topic for yourself? Because this website is not really a "do your homework for you" forum.

No longer being a student I don't have access to nursing journal databases. Google searches don't produce credible sources. I am not doing homework. I am looking for credible studies that I can use to help implement evidence based staffing protocols for my facility.

Sign up for medscape. They have a lot of research. Also your work should allow you access to journals.

Thanks for the rec for medscape. I found 2 interesting articles! We only have access to one journal at my hospital, and it isn't nursing specific. I have access to a hospital library at a sister facility, but it is a couple of hours away from where I live.

Have you tried google scholar?? Sometimes you can get some decent hits....not sure if the below would help, but this is what I found doing a five minute search using google scholar with the search term "fatigue in registered nurses"... sometimes you can get access to free articles....http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/23/4/202.fullhttp://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses_1/subm...othMThesis.pdfhttp://www.aacn.org/WD/CETests/Media/A0615013.pdfhttp://medqi.bsd.uchicago.edu/docume...orQSHC4_08.pdf

The ANA and nursing management on the national level are really starting to look at the research on this in the context of 12 hour shifts. This follows the Institute of Medicine's success in getting the hours residents work consecutively reduced because of the clear evidence of the increase in danger to patients. The Institute has recommended the same reduction in hours for nurses. You should be able to find a lot of recent information on this subject.

I really don't understand how hospitals expect us to follow evidenced based practices without access to the research and recommendations! I am extremely fortunate to have access to an awesome online database at my facility, but we are a teaching hospital. Are there any nursing schools that do clinicals at your facility? Maybe a quid pro quo for allowing students into the hospital - they could allow access to their database? Good luck!

@TheMrsRNAsk the librarian at the sister hospital if you can access the electronic databases from your hospital campus. George Pink and Cheryl Jones have good work on this but there is a lot out there. Ask the librarian how to sign in to google scholar and you can use that.Alternatively, try pubmed or nih.gov or look at nursing specific sites. I'm sure the ANA has stuff on staffing.

I have no credible research. The only source here is my own observation.Know that admin authorizes only so many FTE's. When the census spikes we are run ragged because there is nothing to draw from. No stop-gap measure in place to augment a crisis level influx of patients.Oh, there IS fatigue... and then the call-in's start. (3 to 4 at a time)There is no budget or plan for "surge" staffing (a pro-active approach) only skeleton resources and re-active measures only after the flag goes up. Every time we try to be proactive the bean-counters shoot us down. No money for it.There is no relief and those of us that actually show up and we get beat to hell.Horrible way to staff any department.

Quote from TheMrsRNDoes anyone know of any journal articles or research studies on nursing fatigue? Thanks!ETA: This isn't homework. I am not a student. I am looking for credible studies that I can use to help implement evidence based staffing protocols for my facility. Also, if you don't know of any, but work at a facility that has staffing policies to prevent nursing fatigue, what are they and how are they working at your hospital?

I work, I'm exhausted.How's that?

@emergencyi'm totally feeling you! It's RIDICULOUS that if there is a call out we staff the floor inappropriately. We still get in trouble if we don't dot every i and cross every t. Seriously? We worked (wo)man down for 3 of the last 12 hour shifts. Just be happy we didn't kill anyone!This very reason it was has me looking to take a break from the bedside. There needs to be a big enough float pool to cover the call outs. Especially if you are in a big hospital. We have 800 beds so it wouldn't be hard to predict call outs for each shift and find a way to have enough nurses waiting in the wings to pick up any slack. And the bean counters should realize that if they staff the floor better, they won't continue to have to replace nurses like me! It takes $60,000 to recruit a nurse. That would be a whole lot of float nurses!