Nutrition and health in hotel staff on different shift patterns.

BACKGROUND: Limited research is available that examines the nutritional behaviour and health of hotel staff working alternating and regular shifts. AIMS: To analyse the nutritional behaviour and health of employees working in alternating and regular shifts. METHODS: The study used an ex post facto cross-sectional analysis to compare the nutritional behaviour and health parameters of workers with alternating shifts and regular shift workers. Nutritional behaviour was assessed with the Food Frequency Questionnaire. Body dimensions (body mass index, waist hip ratio, fat mass and active cell mass), metabolic values (glucose, triglyceride, total cholesterol and low- and high-density lipoprotein), diseases and health complaints were included as health parameters. RESULTS: Participants worked in alternating (n = 53) and regular shifts (n = 97). The average age of subjects was 35 ± 10 years. There was no significant difference in nutritional behaviour, most surveyed body dimensions or metabolic values between the two groups. However, alternating shift workers had significantly lower fat mass and higher active cell mass but nevertheless reported more pronounced health complaints. Sex and age were also confirmed as influencing the surveyed parameters. CONCLUSIONS: Shift-dependent nutritional problems were not conspicuously apparent in this sample of hotel industry workers. Health parameters did not show significantly negative attributes for alternating shift workers. Conceivably, both groups could have the same level of knowledge on the health effects of nutrition and comparable opportunities to apply this. Further studies on nutritional and health behaviour in the hotel industry are necessary in order to create validated screening programmes.

[Helpful adjustment--helpless accommodation. Physicians and the administration of Lower Saxony during the extermination of psychiatric patients at the time of national socialism]. / Hilfreiche Anpassung--hilflose Fügung. Arzte und Verwaltung Niedersachsens während der Vernichtung psychisch Kranker zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.

After a brief introduction describing the development and organisation of the National Socialist extermination programmes to eliminate patients suffering from mental diseases, a description is given of the way these programmes were translated into reality in the then province of Hannover. The provincial government implemented these programmes hesitatingly but nevertheless as ordered, whereas the administrative decrees were complied with in a widely different manner by the individual psychiatric hospitals. These differences in the daily routine on-the-spot realisation of the extermination programmes suggest raising the question of professional ethics in psychiatry, as outlined by the author.