Introduction:

The daily nursing activities in the hospital involve day and night hours, which generates conflicts in the synchronization of biological rhythms and has direct implications in the wake-sleep cycle. The irregular schedules of the shifts may coincide with the biological rhythms, social habits, schedules for living with family and friends, as well as the can cause damage to the health and quality of social life of workers.

Objective:

To evaluate the quality of life and the quality of sleep of nurses in hospital shifts.

Methods:

Quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study. 104 nurses from a university hospital participated. The data were collected from January to September 2015, through the following instruments: personal and professional information questionnaire, Pittsburgh sleep quality index and WHOQOL-Bref questionnaire.

Results:

In all sleep quality indexes, the data showed better perception for the group of daytime shift workers compared with those of the nighttime shift. The quality of life was better in all domains for the daytime group than those who worked at night (p=0.024).

Conclusion:

The nurses who worked in the daytime shift had a better quality of sleep and life than those who worked at night.