Night work and rotating shift work are found to be detrimental to the health of workers. A cross
sectional analytical study was conducted among the employees of a public medical centre in
Kuala Lumpur. A total of 380 employees participated in the health screening and questionnaire
survey. The majority of the respondents were Malays, females, and with mean age of 49 years old.
The shift workers persistently had higher but non-significant proportions of being overweight/
obesity and unhealthy clinical indicators such as systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting
blood glucose and lipid profile except waist circumferences and HDL-cholesterol. There were
also slightly more shift workers diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, hypertension or coronary
heart disease (p>0.05). Although the present study could not provide established evidence for a
relationship between shift work and cardiovascular risks, this could serve as a pilot study for future
studies in this area.
Health Education