Shift Work Association with Cardiovascular Diseases and Cancers among Healthcare Workers: A Literature Review

The round-the-clock demands of healthcare services, coupled with the shortage of healthcare providers in many parts of the world have made shift work widespread among healthcare workers. Understanding how to mitigate adverse health effects associated with shift work is essential to health promotion, disease prevention, and quality of life. This comprehensive review aims to present evidence linking shift work with cardiovascular diseases and cancers among healthcare workers. Several studies demonstrated evidence of the association between long-term shift work exposure and the risk of cardiovascular diseases. The testimony about shift work-related adverse health effects has been on the rise among healthcare workers. Shift work disturbs circadian patterns and cardiopulmonary processes, leading to adverse health outcomes. Increasing prevalence of shift work in healthcare industries due to population expansion and public health threat of cancers call for investigation towards a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of shift work-induced diseases. Shift work period was considered in different studies using various criteria, resulting in inconsistent measurement definition leading to misclassification of the study population. There is a need for a more considerable and wholistic effort towards standardization of shift work definition, and conduct assessment to establish an actionable framework for intervention strategies.