The nurses’ union Pasyno has officially submitted a request to offer retirement at 60 for nurses working night shifts, which is set to impose new pressures and upheaval on the health system if they push ahead with the demand.

Although it’s indisputable that night shifts take a heavy health toll on those who do them, especially as people get older, with increased risk of heart disease, cancer, sleep disorders and depression, the proposal poses a minefield of complexities.

Pasyno is making its case mainly for nurses over the age of 55 who have worked years or decades of night shifts. But the union hasn’t made it clear whether it wants the early retirement to apply to nurses across the board and include those who may not have done extensive night shifts during their careers.

There are already labour laws in place governing night shifts, and it’s also possible that some people may choose to do more of them for overtime pay.

It says that several EU countries including Italy, France and Spain have early retirement for nurses because night shifts not only take a toll, in the health sector, exhausted staff are likely to make more errors, take more sick leave and offer a reduced quality of care.

This is also true and there may be some nurses who don’t want to do such shifts but have no choice in the matter.

The biggest issue, of course, is that there is a continued shortage of nurses in the healthcare system to begin with and probably a good portion of them are close to the standard early retirement age of 63 anyway. Being able to opt out of the profession a further three years earlier would be disastrous. 

Pasyno says it is aware that its proposal could cause upheaval and says it is not the union’s intent to cause such a problem. Its solution is to make the nursing profession more attractive to younger people with more incentives and better pay.

It sounds more like wishful thinking than a feasible objective.

A health ministry study some time back said the island would be facing a severe shortage of both doctors and nurses by the end of the decade. The vast majority of doctors are aged over 45 and the nursing shortage is perennial.

Removing more of them earlier will just add to this.  An interim solution would seem to be incentivising people financially to do more night shifts on a voluntary basis at their own risk while offering opt outs to those who feel they can’t handle them after a certain age.

This is one of those growing issues that Cyprus will have to deal with in the coming decades due to its aging population and it will not only affect the health sector.

If nurses are offered a sweeping retirement at aged 60, it will likely result in demands from other sectors that involve night shifts such as paramedics, hotel and bakery workers, taxi drivers, casino and airport staff, security guards and even journalists.