Clare Ellen Super

This project uses microbiome data and an anthropological approach to understand of nurses’ health patterns. Physiologically/psychologically stressful conditions contribute to shifts in the gut microbiome, which can influence cardiometabolic health. Nursing is commonly associated such conditions and poor cardiometabolic health outcomes, including coronary heart disease (CHD), metabolic disorders, obesity, and gastrointestinal complaints, especially in rotational/night shifts and in high stress hospital environments. Nursing research rarely includes microbiome data. This project compares biomarker and survey data from a cohort of nurses as they engage in rotational shift and non-shift work. A cross-sectional sample survey of nurses (n=100) will measure both shift and non-shift nurses’ indicators of microbial diversity/composition, inflammation, intestinal permeability, and metabolism. Survey data will record diet, activity level, socioeconomic status, demographics and shift-work conditions to assess how these factors may mediate metabolic and microbial outcomes. Multiple biological samples and questionnaires will be collected from a focused group (n=20) who have not engaged in rotating shift work in over a year, starting in their first month of shiftwork, followed by monthly sampling for four months. This project will demonstrate how frontline shift labor becomes embodied and how broader occupational forces get under the skin of our crucial healthcare workers.