Rotating Night Shifts and Physical Well-Being in Nurses: Cross-Sectional Associations Consistent with a Sleep Quality Pathway

<b>Background</b>: Rotating and night-including shifts disrupt circadian alignment, impair sleep, and may reduce nurses' physiological recovery. <b>Objectives</b>: This study aimed (1) to compare sleep quality and physical well-being across four shift schedules among hospital nurses and (2) to examine whether the association between rotating shifts and physical well-being was statistically consistent with an indirect association via sleep quality. <b>Methods</b>: In this cross-sectional study, 173 nurses from a tertiary hospital in Zagreb, Croatia, completed validated measures of sleep quality and physical well-being. Four shift patterns were analyzed-fixed morning, morning-afternoon, extended 12-h, and rotating three-shift-using Welch ANOVA and regression models. A bootstrapped mediation analysis (10,000 resamples; BCa method), interpreted as a statistical decomposition, estimated an indirect association consistent with sleep quality. <b>Results</b>: Rotating-shift nurses reported the poorest sleep (PSQI = 10.2 ± 2.6; <i>p</i> = 0.003). Physical well-being did not differ significantly across shift types (<i>p</i> = 0.08), although rotating-shift nurses had the lowest mean physical scores (24.3 ± 4.4). The rotating-shift subgroup was small (n = 16), limiting precision. The mediation analysis was statistically consistent with an indirect association between rotating shifts and physical well-being via sleep quality (ACME = -1.85, 95% CI -3.05 to -0.88; <i>p</i> < 0.001), while the proportion of the total association was imprecisely estimated. <b>Conclusions</b>: In this single-site cross-sectional sample, rotating night shifts were associated with poorer sleep and, on average, lower physical well-being; patterns were statistically consistent with an indirect association via sleep quality. Because exposure, mediator, and outcome were measured concurrently, these findings are hypothesis-generating and do not establish causality.