Does smoking cause medical incidents in nurses working in hospitals?

Abstract

The possibility that lifestyle factors such as smoking and sleep-wake habits could affect incidents caused by nurses was investigated. Nurses (N=1,622, 1,515 women and 107 men) participated in this study. We analyzed data on female nurses (n=557, 32.2±8.9 years: 36 [6.5%] smokers, 464 [83.3%] non-smokers that had never smoked, 57 [10.2%] non-smoking former smokers) who completed all questions related to their smoking status, their sleep-wake habits assessed by the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, and the Incidents Index for Hospital Nurses. Results indicated that 434 (77.9%) nurses were of the evening type, and 123 (22.1%) were of the morning type, and smokers experienced significantly more incidents than did non-smokers. Nurses who were evening-type smokers reported marginally significantly higher rates of incidents than nurses who were morning-type smokers. Moreover, the ratio of non-smokers who were former smokers was significantly higher in the morning type than in the evening type. It is concluded that smoking affected incidents caused by hospital nurses. It is also suggested that a morning-type lifestyle could facilitate smoking cessation.View full abstract