Division of General Internal Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.
Gerontologist. 2019 Nov 16;59(6):1065-1077. doi: 10.1093/geront/gny176.
Long-term care employees and employees with nonwork caregiving roles are at high risk for sleep problems and fatigue. Little is known, however, about relationships between sleep and fatigue among long-term care employees who occupy nonwork caregiving roles. This study examined whether longer sleep duration and better sleep quality reduce fatigue occurrence and severity within and between long-term care employees with nonwork caregiving roles, and investigated nonwork caregiving role occupancy as a moderator of these relationships.
The sample comprised 166 women working in U.S.-based nursing homes. All women had children aged 9-17 years and some also had nonwork caregiving responsibilities for adult relatives. Sleep (duration and quality) and fatigue (occurrence and severity) were assessed via telephone interviews for eight consecutive evenings. Multilevel modeling was used to examine within-person and between-person associations.
At the within-person level, nights characterized by longer-than-usual sleep duration or better-than-usual sleep quality were followed by days with lower odds of reporting fatigue; these same sleep characteristics predicted less severe next-day fatigue. At the between-person level, employees with better average sleep quality, but not longer sleep duration, had lower odds of experiencing fatigue. Relationships between sleep and fatigue were generally similar regardless of nonwork caregiving responsibilities for children or for both children and adults.
Findings suggest that tonight's sleep predicts tomorrow's fatigue. Given the serious and wide-ranging consequences of fatigue, sleep constitutes a worthwhile intervention target with potential benefits for employees, care recipients, and organizations.
长期护理员工和有非工作照护角色的员工面临睡眠问题和疲劳的高风险。然而，对于承担非工作照护角色的长期护理员工中，睡眠与疲劳之间的关系知之甚少。本研究探讨了较长的睡眠时间和较好的睡眠质量是否会减少长期护理员工中存在非工作照护角色的个体内和个体间的疲劳发生和严重程度，并调查了非工作照护角色的占据是否会调节这些关系。
该样本包括 166 名在美国养老院工作的女性。所有女性的孩子年龄在 9-17 岁之间，有些女性还对成年亲属有非工作照护责任。通过连续八晚的电话访谈评估睡眠（持续时间和质量）和疲劳（发生和严重程度）。使用多层次模型来检验个体内和个体间的关联。
在个体内水平上，睡眠时间比平时长或睡眠质量比平时好的夜晚，第二天报告疲劳的几率较低；同样的睡眠特征预测第二天疲劳程度较轻。在个体间水平上，平均睡眠质量较好的员工，而不是睡眠时间较长的员工，疲劳的几率较低。无论对儿童还是儿童和成人都有非工作照护责任的员工，睡眠与疲劳之间的关系大致相似。
研究结果表明，今晚的睡眠预测明天的疲劳。鉴于疲劳的严重和广泛影响，睡眠是一个值得干预的目标，对员工、护理接受者和组织都有潜在的好处。
