Night Shift and its Impact upon the Quality of Life of Nurses Working at the Teaching Hospitals of the Medical City Complex in Baghdad City, Iraq Maan Hameed Ibrahim Al-Ameri* Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Department, College of Nursing/ University of Baghdad , Iraq * Corresponding author: Al-Ameri MHI, Assistant Professor, Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Department, College of Nursing, University of Baghdad, Iraq, Tel: 981333238053; E-mail: dr.m.alameri@conursing.uobaghdad.edu.iq Received date: April 19, 2017; Accepted date: July 17, 2017; Published date: July 25, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Al-Ameri MHI. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Background: Nurses are key players in health care delivery, with night shift nurses having a special role in the provision of this health care. Night shift nurses are responsible for patient care with little support in a difficult working environment; under conditions of fatigue and other hardships directly related to working at night. Objective: The present study aims to find out the impact of night shift on nurses quality of life; and to find out any relationship between the quality of life and some demographic characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, level of education and duration of career. Methodology: A descriptive study was carried out to assess the nurses’ quality of life. The nurses who work at Teaching hospitals of Medical City Complex were recruited from the 21st of February to 15th of July 2015. A non- probability sample of 70 night shift nurses was selected. The investigator constructed the questionnaire for purpose of the study. This questionnaire consisted of two parts; some demographic characteristics of those nurses and a scale which assess the levels of quality of night shift nurses. Data are analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and Pearson Chi-Square as an inferential statistical analysis. Results: The study results revealed that the majority of study participants were young and married. About quarter of the number of the nurses have duration of career of five years and less. More than half of nurses had very weak and weak quality of life. Mid-aged nurses had lower levels of quality of life. The results showed that the male nurses had higher levels of quality of life than female nurses did and the married nurses are more likely to have lower levels of quality of life than unmarried did. Finally, there was a significant relationship between levels of quality of life and gender and age. Recommendation: The study recommends that it should provide adequate off-duty hours to let an uninterrupted sleep cycle of at least 8 h a day, which may affect nurses’ daily life at home. It should use permanent shift assignments, which may diminish tiredness effects, instead of rotating shift duties. Keywords: Night shif; Impact; Quality; Life; Nurses; Medical; Hospitals Background Te term shif work is defned as an arrangement of working hours that uses two or more teams (shifs) of workers, in order to extend the hours of operation of the work environment beyond that of the conventional ofce hours [1]. Nursing is considered as a stressful occupation [2-4]. Stress has an implication for health and the satisfaction level of the Nurses involved which eventually has an impact on the quality of care for the patients they attend to [5]. Te night-shif nurses has rapidly increased worldwide over the last decades and nurses work long-hour night shif have become under conditions of intense stress. In addition, they ofen sufer from excessive workloads, stress, minimal social support and low quality of life [6]. Long-term night and shif work in nurses becoming more pessimistic and less vicarious as their training progresses, and might be associated with many health-related problems like fatigue, sleep problems, anxiety and difculties in maintaining regular lifestyles [7]. Research in night shif has identifed a number of stressors depending on the area of specialty. However, some common stressors in these specialties include poor working relationship between nurses and other health team members, demanding communication and relationship with patients’ relatives, emergency cases, high workload, understafed and lack of support or feedback from their seniors [8,9]. Working in night shifs creates difculties in family life and tends to restrict nurses’ social and leisure activities [10]. Particularly, working at night, either on permanent or rotating shifs, ofen produces discordance with the spouse’s working hours and free time [11]. Nurses in 12 h shifs reported less social and domestic disruption than workers in 8 h shifs [12,13]. Numerous studies have shown high amounts of psychological distress in nurses and other healthcare professionals working in various situations [14]. Night shif causes an imbalance between desired lifestyle and work, women have a major role to play in the domestic life and they compromise their sleep to undertake the domestic chores such as care to their children and family chores. To fnd out whether night shif afects the social aspect of nurses or not 60% of respondents stated that their social life is sometimes afected, 33% stated that always their social life is afected that is mean 93% of Al-Ameri, J Nurs Care 2017, 6:4 DOI: 10.4172/2167-1168.1000414 Research Article Open Access J Nurs Care, an open access journal ISSN:2167-1168 Volume 6 • Issue 4 • 1000414 J o u r n a l o f N u r s i n g & C a r e ISSN: 2167-1168 Journal of Nursing and Care