The impact of night shifts on sustained attention and risk-taking behaviour: a study in healthcare professionals.

This study analysed the effects of night shifts on the cognitive performance of 62 healthcare workers, focusing particularly on attention and risk-taking behaviour, and integrating other parameters such as risk propensity, chronotype, perceived sleepiness, workload, demographic data, and coffee consumption into the analysis. The results showed that reaction times increased, along with risk-taking behaviour and perceived sleepiness after night shifts. The study found that the effects of night shifts were different depending on the role played by healthcare workers in the hospital. Nurses showed more risk-taking behaviour after night shifts compared to doctors, while medical residents had the highest scores on the DOSPERT risk-taking scale. In terms of age and sex, the study did not find any significant correlation with the cognitive performance of the participants. However, the study found that morningness was significantly associated with a less relevant reduction in cognitive performance before and after night shifts, suggesting that taking chronotype into account when organizing shifts could improve the workers' quality of life, increase their productivity, and reduce the risk of accidents and medical errors. Future studies could expand the sample to include a more diverse age range to investigate the effects of night shifts in a broader population