Designing shift work: Proposal for a participatory approach deployed in a hospital setting and focusing on actual work.

Designing the working day is not just a matter of changing the shift system. It also requires reflection on the working conditions and a negotiation of solutions with the stakeholders concerned. This article seeks to show that a participatory approach, built using organisational simulation, provides a framework with which to understand the reality of each profession and co-construct suitable solutions.

Job demands and resting and napping opportunities for nurses during night shifts: impact on sleepiness and self-evaluated quality of healthcare.

The aim of this field study is to describe night shift resting and napping strategies and to examine their beneficial effects on sleepiness and quality of work. The study was carried out with 16 nurses working in an intensive care unit. Data collected during 20 night shifts were related to job demands (systematic observations), to the duration and timing of rests and naps taken by nurses (systematic observations, sleep diaries), to sleepiness (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale), and to quality of work scores (visual analog scale).

Advantages of shift changeovers with meetings: ergonomic analysis of shift supervisors' activity in aircraft building.

Good shift changeovers contribute to ensuring continuity and reliability in shift work. In situations where production is not maintained 24 h a day, changeovers with meetings (SCM) between the two work teams (written plus oral face-to-face handovers) alternate with changeovers without meetings (SCnM; written handovers only). An ergonomic work analysis on an aircraft assembly line showed that (1) incoming and outgoing operators met during the overlap time allotted by the company, and (2) the content of the exchanges was richer for SCMs than for SCnMs.