In modern day society there is an increasing need to work longer 24hour shifts. using your knowledge of biological rhythms and their impacts disscuss the impact of these demands.
Shift work is a work pattern that falls outside of the normal 9-5 working hours. Shift hours came into place firstly in hospitals. This was because the patients needed round the clock care. Another place where shift work came into place was in factories. However even though there are advantages to this type of work there are negatives too, one of these is that there are major disruptions to the employee’s sleep patterns. Most sleep is needed during the times of 2-4 am. This is when most shift workers will struggle to get through their shift. Another reason why it affects them is because it changes the circadian rhythm.
The circadian rhythm is a 24hour rhythm which a person recognises and it tells the person to sleep when it is dark and to wake when it is light. This is affected by shift work because they spend most their time under artificial light. Another reason why they struggle is because when the lights go off they need to make sure that they stay awake in case there us an emergency of some kind. Employees can sometimes be offered a night shift where they can have a couple of hours sleep, however they opt out of this type of contact because it pays less than what a night shift without sleeping does. Employers hardly ever give out these types of contract because they feel that they cannot justify paying employees to sleep whilst they are at work. Another biological rhythm that gets disrupted by shift work is the Ultradian Rhythm, this is a cycle that repeats more than once in a 24hour time period.
The Ultradian rhythm describes the non-rem and the rem cycle. The non-rem cycle consist of 3 stages, however before the body enters into the rem cycle it has to go through all stages of