Working the night shift can strain workers and their families

By Katie Leonard
4/23/10

In fields like medicine or public safety, new workers expect to pay their dues by working the night shift. It comes with the territory. What these newbies might not be prepared for are the stresses that can accompany these positions and the adjustments they and their families need to make.

Nicole Harnois, 26, works as a nurse on a post-surgery care floor at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital in Melrose, Mass. After graduating from nursing school in the spring of last year, Harnois was hired for the day shift. But, shortly after she completed her new graduate orientation and training, Harnois was told that, temporarily, she would be working the overnight shift.

"For me, to do it all the time, I just couldn't," she said.

The potential strain on family life

Much of the research done on night shift work has focused on the potential for its negative effects on workers' health, including thyroid issues, diabetes, cardiovascular illnesses and cancer, as well as higher rates of stress and exhaustion. However, the shift has been found to put workers' family and home lives at risk as well.

A study done at the University of Maryland in 2000 found that among married couples, working the night shift increased the odds of divorce by six times in men, and three times for women. Another study that appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health found that children, especially daughters, of men that worked the night shift were more likely to experience depressive symptoms and have lower self esteem.

"You feel like you're either at work or sleeping"

For Harnois, working three 12-hour, 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shifts during the week affects her schedule not only on her working days, but days off as well.

"That one 12-hour shift pretty much takes up two days," said Harnois. "You're trying to adjust the day before and the day after."

Harnois said she has to catch some sleep before her shift and also when she gets home. Naturally, sleeping during the day presents some challenges. Besides the fact that it's light out, Nicole said that during the day, there is more street noise: cars driving by, dogs barking and the mailman coming and going.

Harnois's husband Rich also works in shifts, but at his job, the shifts can last for months. He's a corporal in the United States Marine Corps, and just returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Not wanting to live alone while her husband was away and to save money, Harnois moved in with her in-laws last May. During the time she was working the night shift, Rich's brother Adam and his wife were also living in the house.

Click the video below to see how Nicole and Rich's lives changed when he started his "shift" in Iraq.

"In the house that I live in, everybody has different work schedules," said Harnois. "A lot of people work close or some people are retired, so there'd be people in and out all the time, the garage door opening and closing, people going up the stairs, people making food."

"Normally if everybody's sleeping at night, it doesn't matter, but when you're the one person during the day, it's hard."

Besides having to adjust to a new sleep schedule, Harnois also had to change her eating habits.

"You don't really know what to eat, when," said Harnois.

Harnois said she would not eat much of anything during the day because she was exhausted or not feeling well. When she would get up to go to work around 5:45 p.m., her family was eating dinner, and she felt like eating breakfast. Because of the busy pace of her job, she didn't get much time to stop and eat a full meal, and ended up just snacking.

"We were losing track of what she was doing"

Don Harnois, Harnois's father-in-law, said that with her irregular work schedule, he and his wife worried at night because they didn't know whether she was home safely or not.

"We were losing track of what she was doing too. We didn't know if she was working during the day, during the night, or not working at all," said Don.

To resolve this, Harnois started writing her work schedule on her in-law's calendar so they would know when she would be working and when she would be home sleeping.

Since Harnois's bedroom is right over the garage, her mother-in-law Liz started parking her car in the driveway instead of opening the door and risking waking her.

"It was easier on us than it was her," said Don.

Gerrilyn D'Amato is a Certified Nursing Assistant and worked with Harnois while she was on the night shift. D'Amato said that while some of people she works with enjoy and have adjusted to the night shift, she knew that Nicole did not like it.

"It is backwards to everything else," said D'Amato.

D'Amato, who also lives at home in Peabody, said her family is beginning to understand the differences between her schedule and theirs.

"Most of them have finally figured out that I am not some Wonder Woman who can stay up 48 hours straight and that sometimes my night is their day," she said.

Click the audio below to hear Harnois tell the story of how Gerrilyn D'Amato taught her family a lesson about working nights.

Recently, Harnois went back to the day shift she was originally hired for, and there's no love lost for her time on the night shift.

"I hated it," said Harnois. "I'm happy to be on the day shift."