The Effects of Shift Work

I am writing my paper over the effects of shift work on the human body. Some aspects I’m specifically focusing on are the melatonin levels in the brain and how they change with shift work experience. Another is the development of cancer in people who have worked shift work for a long time and if working shift work heightens their chances of getting cancer. The reason I am writing about this topic is because I plan on working in the medical field and I unfortunately will have to work shift work schedules for the majority of my career. I know it will take years for my body to get used to the varying work schedule and reading about the effects of shift work on our bodies helps me take precautions when I am working in the future. Not only am I studying this topic for personal experience, but it is a topic that has little recognition. Many doctors work up to eighty hours a week and suffer time away from their family, sleep and even regular eating schedules. Not only can shift work effect your mood, but it also effects your mood because your family has to live around your schedule.

Specific ways I intend to use for appeals to my readers are logos, pathos, ethos and kairos. When using logos I will argue that shift workers don’t get enough appreciation from employees and that mistakes can be made at work because the workers are exhausted. Pathos is persuading with emotion and I plan to use an example of a mother with a young child who isn’t there when her son is awake during the day because she has to sleep for her night shift but sometimes she stays awake to visit with him but the repercussions of her being tired at work could be harmful to the patient. Persuading the reader through moral authority or credibility is known as pathos and how I plan to lead this part of my paper is appealing to the person’s life when they work shift work. Basically put yourself in that person’s shoes and imagine if you’d like working in that environment. The last appeal to the reader is kairos which is arguing at the right moment or to stress the timelines of an issue. One famous example I will use is a nurse giving a patient important medications and administering the wrong dosage to the patient because she’s so tired to think straight. Here I will argue that changing a normal shift work schedule from two twelve hour shifts to three eight hour shifts would keep this from happening. Something dangerous could happen with workers in a chemical plant mixing highly explosive chemicals and if someone is too sleepy to pay attention then the Baytown area could be blown up.

I plan to incorporate how people are missing out on the beautiful night sky because they are working and are fed light through electronic lights such as computers or light bulbs. The types of research articles I have found are more study based articles where clinical studies were performed over a period of time on shift workers. The research is definitely giving me good examples and points to think of when I will be working shift work. All the articles I have found are based in very different working environments with the workers having only one thing in common which is working shift work. These articles portray people of all age ranges as well as what countries they live in. I’m trying to find the most diverse articles to compare to each other to prove that shift work is detrimental to a person’s health.