Effect of shift working on reaction time in hospital employees

Visual and Auditory reaction time (VRT, ART) were studied in 286 hospital employees during day duty and night duty in the age group of 20 to 60 years to find out the effect of shift working on reaction time in hospital employees. Subjects were presented with two visual stimuli i.e. red and green light and two auditory stimuli, i.e., high pitch and low pitch sound stimuli. The significance of difference of VRT and ART during day duty and night duty was studied with the use of standard error of difference between two means. The statistical difference was determined by 'z' test. VRT during day duty (231.60 +/- 30.93) were less than VRT during night duty (234.98 +/- 32.27) and ART during day duty (224.69 +/- 46.95) were also less than ART during night duty (228.74 +/- 47.01). Our results indicate that reaction time is more during night duty as compared to day duty but the difference is not significant. It may be because of hospital employees get adapted to reduced sleep after working continuously in the shift system.