Introduction
The article under critique is titled “Asleep on the job: Can night shift napping provide more excellent safety for staff and patients?”, written by Jennifer Gamble and Paula Foran. The article discusses that those nurses attending night duties have the highest risk of fatigue and impairment in their thinking. The risks that they are subjected to cause them to pose a risk to the patients they are looking after, themselves, and the community since they are always drowsy while driving themselves home. The article challenges healthcare organizations, managers, and nurses to evaluate the health work safety guidelines and implement napping during night duties as safety precautions. Fatigue and disruptions during sleep affect perioperative nursing; nurse exhaustion is a global issue that contributes to staff health decline, patient care mistakes, and time away from work due to illness.
Identification
Any healthcare facility in the neighborhoods is always operating; they are never closed, there are doctors and nurses working night shifts. Sometimes these nurses work both the day and night shift before they get to relax. They do not have time to sleep; therefore, they do not receive enough rest. The aim of this article is to confirm that the napping technique can help patients and the staff working night duty, and if so, the reason why the method is not widely practiced and what obstacles could be in the way of its implementation. The article’s main idea is to demonstrate why nurses’ fatigue is a global issue and why a napping technique can help cope with the issue.
Evaluation
The argument presented in the article by the author is convincing. The napping technique allows nurses working during the night to get a little rest so that they get rejuvenated and improve their working processes. Since exhaustion affects a nurse’s ability to operate effectively, there are legal ramifications to it. For nurses to perform their duties, they must be mentally and physically fit and should ensure that exhaustion does not affect their work (Gamble & Foran, 2021). This article is crucial as it informs how to help deal with the fatigue crisis of nurses. It gives a possible solution: the napping technique, which has been proven and tested in the laboratory on human test subjects. Barriers to implementation include shortage of personnel to cover for those napping, increased workload for those who will not be sleeping, lack of adequate napping space, and concerns that the organization was against the operation.
Response
The article is very informative and engaging; the authors did their research effectively and extensively. It is important to mention, that one of the authors is a doctor by profession, Dr. Paula Foran; she guided her fellow author, Jennifer Gamble, throughout the master’s course in preparation for the article’s publication. Having been written by a doctor, this makes it factual and believable. Issues raised in the article include nurses driving home feeling drowsy after night duty and the reason for not implementing napping in healthcare facilities even after being proved by researchers to help deal with fatigue.
Conclusion
Nurse exhaustion is a global issue that contributes to the declining health of staff, mistakes when during patient care, and absenteeism from work due to illness. Despite compelling evidence that napping on night duty enhances technical abilities, the napping technique takes time to implement. Nurse managers and the organization’s policies are some of the reasons why it has been challenging to implement the napping approach. Only through a change in perception and culture will the staff feel that it is appropriate to nap on shifts.
Reference
Gamble, J., & Foran, P. (2021). Asleep on the job: Can night shift napping provide greater safety for both staff and patients? Journal of Perioperative Nursing, 34(1), 6. Web.