Industrial healthDec 1, 2012

Sleep and health changes in oil rig workers before and after two weeks offshore

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 3, 2026

Abstract

Workers reported significantly poorer sleep quality and more complaints of insomnia after a two-week work period.

Sleep quality decreased and insomnia complaints increased among oil rig workers over a two-week period.
No significant differences in subjective health complaints were observed before and after the work period.
Comparing work schedules, both day shift and swing shift workers experienced similar declines in sleep quality and health complaints.
A higher proportion of insomniacs was found among swing shift workers at the end of the work period compared to day workers.

Simplified

This study compared subjective sleep and subjective health complaints among Norwegian oil rig workers, before and after a two week work period. The study also compared differences between two different work schedules. The workers worked either two weeks of day shift (n=90) or two weeks of a swing shift schedule (n=93), involving one week of night shifts, immediately followed by one week of day shifts. Overall, the workers reported significantly poorer sleep quality and more complaints of insomnia at the end compared to the start of the work period. However, there was no significant difference in terms of subjective health complaints. Furthermore, there were no clear differences in changes in sleep quality, insomnia or subjective health complaints during the work period between day- and swing shift workers. However, at the end of the work period a higher proportion of insomniacs were seen among swing shift workers compared with day workers. To conclude, sleep quality and complaints of insomnia became worse during the work period. However, there were few differences in changes in terms of sleep or subjective health complaints between day- and swing shift, suggesting that 12 h day shift affected sleep and health similarly to the schedule involving night work.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View Full Text ↗

Sleep and health changes in oil rig workers before and after two weeks offshore

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief