[The effect of day and night shift working on the attention and anxiety levels of anesthesia residents].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the attention, learning and memory related cognitive functions after 12-hour day versus night shift-work in anaesthesia residents. METHOD Fifteen residents working on the day shift and 18 working on the night shift volunteered. All were interviewed with the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), Visual Aural Digit Span Test (VADST), and State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and after the shifts. Residents' self-evaluations of their fatigue, stress, sleep quality and duration of sleep were sought. RESULTS The two groups were similar regarding age, gender, attention, fatigue, stress, affection, sleep quality and duration of sleep. The number of words learned in the first trial of the Rey AVLT decreased after the shifts in both groups. Before the night shift the word list could be learned more effectively and with fewer trials compared to the pre-day shift. The learning deteriorated, and repetitions and forgotten words increased after the night shift. The aural oral, aural written and visual written subtest scores deteriorated after the night shift. State anxiety levels did not differ between the night and day shift groups or before and after the shifts. CONCLUSION The cognitive functions of residents may be impaired after the night shift. We think that close supervision of residents and provision of more rest for them during night shifts would be beneficial in decreasing their errors, which may affect patients.