The intentions of my project were to explore the science and psychology behind sleep, which led me to research the effects of artificial light, night routine, sleep positions, patterns, cycles, rhythms, jet lag and shift work. I was most excited to explore the effects of shift work and different groups of people this affected. I found that nurses and doctors were mainly affected by long shift hours with a lack of breaks and inconsistent shifts, meaning they didn’t have time to recover between. I studied a range of articles and online chat sites like ‘Quora.com’ to begin researching this pathway, leading me on to seek out real nurses. I emailed three nurses questionnaires, asking about their lack of sleep and struggles with shift work, and found that overwork and a lack of breaks has contributed to poor health, sleep quality, as well as general poor quality of life. I took the most impactful parts of the responses and used these to create a script – I recorded three people reading the script aloud, each playing a role as one of the three nurses. Accompanying this with animated text means the impact of the words is greater, allowing me to share how difficult shift work for nurses can be.
My final piece is a hand-drawn animation using type, with accompanying sound, explaining the struggles of sleep deprivation in nurses, especially for night shift workers. The sound was taken from three nurses’ responses to a questionnaire, which I used to gather the most emotive language to produce a script, and then recorded three individuals reading the script aloud.