Long Shift Schedules

The cluster discusses long work shifts like 12-hour, 16-hour, or 24-hour rotations in professions such as healthcare, firefighting, and manufacturing, debating health impacts, handoff risks, sleep deprivation, employee preferences, and regulatory comparisons.

📉 Falling 0.3x Career & Jobs
2,290
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#8127
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2008
4
2009
7
2010
22
2011
32
2012
32
2013
42
2014
86
2015
74
2016
175
2017
223
2018
159
2019
209
2020
204
2021
230
2022
212
2023
248
2024
199
2025
130
2026
2

Keywords

AFAIK IT US www.iaff BS TSMC EMS UK McDonalds EU shifts shift hour hours night 12 24 sleep hospitals staff

Sample Comments

carlmr Sep 1, 2020 View on HN

Technically a day is not a hard constraint in the short term. Maybe if you do one 36h shift, however unlikely, produces fewer errors than a 12h shift with 2 hand-offs. Long term we know about adverse health effects of inconsistent sleeping patterns, so those would factor in as well.

xpto123 Nov 3, 2014 View on HN

Hello, and is the work at night all the time, or is it shift based only one week a month? Because that's what happens with people that work at hospitals, night guards etc. to avoid harming the workers health in the long-term.

virgilp Apr 3, 2020 View on HN

They work 24/7, I don't think you can presume their "A staff" always works day shifts.

namibj Mar 28, 2025 View on HN

It's actually 11h of mandatory downtime "between shifts"; this does indeed provide for theoretical opportunity to get good sleep for people with a short enough commute.

gaius Nov 24, 2016 View on HN

Your people are doing 12-hour shifts every day, and only get sick at weekends?? I call shenanigans.

virgilp Mar 5, 2020 View on HN

AFAIK they work in shifts, non-stop; crazy hours & weekend is irrelevant in this context.

xboxnolifes Dec 4, 2022 View on HN

Definitely is impossible for some parts of the world/schedules. 8 hours can be completely overlapped by a shift. One job I had I never saw sunlight during the week in winter.

rbohac Mar 30, 2019 View on HN

so hospitals can never use this? their doctors and nurses, who are "employees" regularily work 12 hour shifts. the same goes for first responders

mining Aug 3, 2017 View on HN

You're usually on-call for a fairly humane shift, not 24h a day.

partyboat1586 Nov 11, 2019 View on HN

Seems like the only way to regularly work 48hr shifts.