Background:
Shifts and long working hours decrease the psychomotor vigilance of healthcare workers during night shifts and adversely impact the health of nurses and patient safety in particular.

Aim:
The aim of this study is to determine the predisposing factors affecting the psychomotor vigilance of nurses working night shift.

Methods:
This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 83 nurses working in a private hospital in istanbul and voluntarily participating in the study between 25 april and 30 may 2022. Data were collected using descriptive characteristics form, psychomotor vigilance task, pittsburgh sleep quality index, and epworth sleepiness scale. SPSS version 24.0 was used to analyze the data. Independent sample t-test and one way anova were used to compare nurses PVT test results with their descriptive characteristics, and scheffes test, a Post-Hoc test, was used for pairwise comparisons. In order to determine the factors affecting the PVT test, meaningful models were created using multiple linear regression.

Results:
When the time-dependent variation of the nurses PVT performances during the night shift was examined, it was observed that there was a significant difference, and the nurses’ mean reaction time and number of lapses of attention increased at the end of the night shift. It was found that 88% of the nurses had poor sleep quality and 38.55% had daytime sleepiness.

Conclusion:
Factors affecting nurses PVT performance were found to be associated with age, smoking, physical activity, daily water consumption, daytime sleepiness, and sleep quality. Suggestions for health policy include the need to determine the attention levels of nurses working night shift for ensuring employee and patient health and safety and creating a healthy working environment, and to implement workplace health promotion programs in order to increase the attention level of nurses.