Shift work in health care

This paper discusses the use of the technique of latent variables to gain insight into the consequences of shift work in health care. The method used differs from methods most often used in research concerning shift work, and the results show that shift work in health care seems to be less harmful than in industry, the health of the nurses being only slightly affected by it. However, in the context of nurses' social life, the results are more in accordance with what has been found in other inquiries; shift work is found to have a rather strong negative effect.