Sleep-Scheduling Strategies in Hospital Shiftworkers

Shiftwork causes circadian disruption and results in impaired performance, sleep, and health. Often, individuals on non-standard shifts cannot modify work schedules. At-home sleep schedules are a potentially modifiable point of intervention, yet sleep-scheduling strategies remain relatively understudied. Specifically, the adoption of multiple strategies and the employment of strategies for not only night shifts, but also early starts on days, have yet to be formally examined to our knowledge. We studied how adoption of specific and/or multiple sleep-scheduling strategies for day and night shifts relates to measures of adaptation to shiftwork, self-reported on-shift sleepiness, and individual characteristics (eg, age, chronotype, education in circadian and sleep health). We hypothesized: 1) strategies would differ by shift type, 2) individuals would adopt multiple strategies, 3) strategies better aligned with circadian principles would relate to measures of adaptation, and 4) individual characteristics, such as having dependents, would relate to strategy selection.