[Relation between sleep deprivation and nursing errors during the night shift]

Nurses who work at night often experience high levels of sleepiness, which are the biological consequence of the circadian rhythm, which induces sleep at particular hours of the night, increasing the risk of errors and accidents.

According to the latest data declared by the World Organization of Healthcare (WHO), at least 134 million patients are victims every year adverse events that occur due to the lack of safety in the health care and and 2.6 million those who die from it, but most of these deaths are avoidable. The study aims to investigate the relationship between sleep deprivation and errors in patient care by the nursing staff who works the night shift. In the aviation and transportation sectors, studies conducted revealed as sleep deprivation increases the risk of mistakes. Few researches have investigated nighttime nursing.

A literature search was conducted by interrogating banks PubMed and Cochrane data limiting article selection to the last 10 years. Only one study met our benchmarks: "Sleep deprivation and error in Nurses who work the night shift "of 2014, by Arlene L. Johnson, whose questionnaire it was adapted to the Italian situation and administered to a sample of 41,000 nurses, to which 3358 responded.

94.7% of the interviewees, during the night shift, carry out ordinary activities. 16.8 of respondents made mistakes in the last two night shifts; in 59.5% of the cases only one mistake was made. Lack of sleep (3-5 hours of sleep during the 24 hours of the day before the interview) seems to determine a higher frequency of errors. This trend is particularly marked a nurses working in critical wards (23.9%). Even the number of nights, affects the propensity to make mistakes, with an error rate of 20.5%.