Rostering: placing the nurse in the picture.

A funded study to investigate best practice in nursing rosters in a busy metropolitan Melbourne children's hospital, identified the complexity of the shiftwork issues when the people who work them are placed centre stage. This paper explores a key finding of the study, which strongly endorses the need to take account of scientific knowledge on health and safety issues of shiftwork, but argues that the personal, socio-cultural and environmental perspective of the nurse needs to be given more attention by the various stakeholders involved with rostering.