Restorative Nap Break

Discussion To grant a restorative nap or sleep to a night nurse is the way to combat sleepiness and fatigue at work. No amount of technology or incentives can fight the problem of fatigue at work but sleep. As long as the practice of nap break is ignored, the danger to patient’s safety, nurses’ health, and decreased nurses’ job satisfaction will continue to be the major issues in the community and health organization. To understand the challenge in implementing the practice, one can summarize the advantages and disadvantages of legalizing the restorative nap break: Advantages: Researchers from many articles and different countries have agreed that fatigue has damaging effects on night nurses’ health, work performance, and job satisfaction.
(2006): Even though there was only 43.7% nurses’ response from the survey study, the high percentage of drowsiness and errors are convincing enough to warrant the use of nap. With the remaining percentage of nurses not surveyed, one can only expect the numerous errors unreported. The suggestion of reduced work hours sounds feasible given the facts by Scott et al. (2006) that inattentiveness from working more than 12 hours is similar to being intoxicated by alcohol. From personal experience, symptoms of dizziness, absent-mindedness, and near-driving accidents were common occurrences after working 12-hours night shift.
Fallis et al. (2011): Out of the 13 Canadian critical and emergency nurses studied, ten approved of getting restorative nap. The strength in this research, though small in samples, was the representation of critical/emergency nurses. These nurses, of all specialties, need to be vigilant in dealing with the sickest patients in the hospital; thus, they are the ones to benefit most from restorative naps. Indeed, a nap break of uninterrupted 20-30 minutes was experienced personally to cause improved alertness and refreshed
According to Edwards et al. (2013), to apply the practice, nurse managers have to change the negative culture of napping in their unit, provide a place for nurses conducive to sleep, arrange adequate staffing to cover nurses on break, and create a formal policy stating the guidelines on restorative nap. Referring back to California hospitals, nurses were allowed to use a vacant space to sleep provided they keep the room tidy and adhere to the break time limit. Nevertheless, there was still no specific policy on nap break in many California