Nurses beware! Shift work can cause cancer.

I worked shift work at the hospital for years, sleeping very little due to my insomnia and trying to readjust to each shift change. Even after leaving the hospital I worked home care which again required changing shifts and often working 12 to 16 hour shifts.

I no longer work these jobs because I know how that made me feel. I have just read an article that verifies what I already felt. Shift work can do more than disrupt your sleep pattern. According to an article on Web Md in December 2007 the World Health Organization’s cancer division classified shift-work as a probable carcinogen.

This is really scary for people whom, by the nature of their jobs, must work shift work. If nurses and doctors refused shift-work, who would care for the patients in the hospitals and nursing home? If you can work strictly night shift or second shift the body can adjust with time, at least theoretically. Some organizations however don’t offer this option and for those of us that had the option it often didn’t help our sleep pattern anyway.

The interruption of sleep causes a reduction in melatonin which is a powerful anti-cancer agent. According to the article, nurses who worked night shift had a 36 percent higher rate of breast cancer than their day-shift working coworkers.

• If we must rotate shifts we should attempt to rotate clockwise, days then evenings and on to night shift etc.

• If working night-shift is your lot in life make your sleep time as night like as possible. Schedule your sleep time. Turn off the phone, and tv. Sleep in your bed with the room darkened. I even had a friend that put a sign on the front and back door, Don’t knock or ring doorbell till after 6pm!

I gave up shift work about 8 years ago but continued to feel its effects for quite sometime after the change to a day-shift routine. I wonder if the change was made soon enough?