Erratum: An Author-Requested Correction

Chronobiology International, Volume 29, Issue 2, pages 211-219

There was a variable label error for one of the subscales reported in the article entitled “Sleep, sleepiness, fatigue, and performance of 12-hour shift nurses.” The Occupational Fatigue, Exhaustion, Recovery Scale data are reported on page 214 in the second paragraph. Due to this labeling issue, the subscale entitled “intershift fatigue” actually represented “intershift recovery,” thus a high score on this subscale indicated a positive outcome. This paragraph should be revised to read:

Occupational fatigue levels showed wide variation in the pooled sample of night- and day-shift nurses, with acute fatigue having the highest mean score (mean = 52.1, SD = 21.3, range 7-90), followed by chronic fatigue(mean = 31.5, SD = 20.3, range 0-80). Six percent of nurses showed very poor intershift recovery (scores < 20 on a scale of 0-100, with higher scores representing better intershift recovery). Sixteen percent of nurses showed either high acute or chronic fatigue, or poor intershift recovery.

The authors believe this does not undermine the main scientific findings in the paper which demonstrate that nurses working successive 12-hour shifts have short sleep between shifts, and some have a high neurobehavioral sensitivity to sleep loss. The authors regret this and want to make this correction to preserve the high scientific integrity of our work and of Chronobiology International.