• Ada-Katrin Busch, Harald Reuter, and Georg Bauer.
• Institut für Sozial- und Präventivmedizin der Universität Zürich. ada-katrin.busch@gmx.ch
• Pflege. 2006 Apr 1; 19 (2): 97-107.

AbstractWork schedules impact significantly on the health and well-being of health care professionals. The prevailing schedules can place the care providers 'at risk both psychologically and physically as well as in their social and private sphere. The added burden of daily activities in intensive care units (ICUs) intensifies these effects. The present quantitative study was designed to determine the range of work schedules currently in practice in intensive care units in Switzerland and to assess their possible health impact on nurses. Furthermore, it assessed how the organizational context differs between intensive care units with better and worse work schedules. A questionnaire was developed, pilot tested, and distributed to 84 ICUs in Switzerland. All 84 professionals responsible for designing the work schedules of nurses on ICUs were requested to fill out the questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods. To assess the health impact of the work schedules, a method was developed which considers the most important health relevant dimensions of the work schedules for a global estimate. Finally, the most extreme groups regarding the health impact of the working schedules were compared regarding their organizational context using non-parametric and parametric tests. The findings show that the working schedules in ICUs could be considerably improved, particularly regarding duration and density of working hours as well as regarding supportive structures of the hospitals.

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