Abstract

To investigate the sleeping patterns and gastrointestinal disorders of shift workers, the auther studied 434 female workers who worked at textile industry ill Taejon city from september 1 ,1992 to september 31 ,1992. Shift pattern were divided into 3 categories; 3 shift (shifts per 8 hours), 2 shift (day and night shift) and day work. The results obtained were as follows: 1. The average sleeping hours when adjusted for the education level of the total study subjects was 6.1 hours. That of 3 shift workers was 6.1 hours, 2 shift workers was 6.0hours, but that of day workers was 6.5 hours. There were no significant difference among the shift workers. 2. For the 3 shift workers, the average physiologic adjusted duration in day shirt(2.2 days) was shorter than that or night shift(2.7 days) and there were significant difference among the rotating shift works (P<0.001). The sleeping problems in day shift was less than those of night shift (P<0.001). 3. 44.9% of 3 shift workers, 39.3% of 2 shift workers and 33.1% of day workers complained gastrointestinal symptoms when adjusted for the age, education level, job tenure, work post. And the rates of gastrointestinal symptoms complained increase with job tenures (P<0.001). 4. The most frequent gastrointestinal diseases were gastitis and gastric ulcer with 14.2 %, Irritable bowel syndrome with 3.1%, duodenitis and duodenal ulcer with 2.1% and combined gastrointestinal disease with 2.1%. Age, eating habit, amount of coffee per day, job tenure, work post and shift pattern showed no significant difference with the gastrointestinal diseases when adjusted for the age. According to the above results, the auther suggested that the shift pattern and job tenure can affect to the sleeping problem and gastrointestinal symptoms.

• Keywords: shift patternsleeping patterngastrointestinal symptom & disease