July 10, 2026 — 5:01 a.m. Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. TOTOTO I work in a hospital. Like many doctors of my generation, I have spent decades participating in night shifts, night rosters, and emergency calls. While I remain committed to
I work in a hospital. Like many doctors of my generation, I have spent decades participating in night shifts, night rosters, and emergency calls. While I remain committed to patient care and contributing fairly to the service, I have found that after-hours work has become increasingly exhausting in recent years.
I am aware that emergency departments and hospitals are under increasing pressure, making workforce flexibility difficult. Likewise, workforce retention may depend on creating sustainable arrangements for experienced physicians.
Should workplaces in 24/7 industries introduce age-related reductions in out-of-hours duties, or should equity in workforce require that everyone continue to participate equally regardless of age, unless there is a specific health exemption?
Hospital work would be demanding at the best of times. I can only imagine how much the pressure would increase if you were asked to work outside of “typical” work hours, possibly affected by sleep disturbances. “Tax” seems to be an understatement.
My first instinct after reading your email was that yes, age must surely be a consideration for hospital administrators. But I have no experience in the area, so I don’t want you to take my uneducated notions as gospel. I asked Dr Hongbo Guo, senior lecturer and assistant professor of management at the University of Canberra, for his expert opinion.
His response was detailed and I sent them everything he mentioned. What I think might be more useful to a broader audience is what you told me about the two competing arguments your question raises. The first is based on what Dr. Guo describes as “formal equality logic.”
“By this logic, equity is equality. All doctors should participate equally in night shifts, night rosters, and emergency calls unless they have a formal exemption,” Dr. Guo explained.
“It has intuitive appeal because it appears as neutral management logic and apparently avoids preferential treatment. The most relevant framework is the anti-discrimination laws we have in Australia, especially the Age Discrimination Act 2004 and state/territory anti-discrimination legislation. The Age Discrimination Act makes it illegal to treat a person unfairly because of their age or age groups in areas of public life, which of course includes employment.”
Dr Guo said the formal equality framework leads to the assertion that there should be no blanket reductions based on age. Because? Because a policy that makes it clear that hospitals think doctors over 50 are too old to work night shifts may be an illegal stereotype.
The second argument employs “risk equity logic”, which is more based on workplace health and safety (WHS) legislation, risk management and occupational health literature. Treats equity as “safe and proportionate allocation of a known danger.”
“Is fatigue a known WHS risk? It absolutely is. Safe Work Australia’s Fatigue Code of Practice 2025 explicitly treats fatigue as a WHS risk that must be eliminated or minimized as far as reasonably practicable. Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, shift allocation is part of the work system.”
It is important that organizations do not assume that all older workers are less capable of working night shifts than their younger colleagues.
If we look at your question from a risk equity perspective, Dr. Guo said, we’re not talking about a mere personal preference to avoid night work. There is substantial evidence to suggest that age may be relevant to sleep, recovery, health, medication, clinical performance, and even travel safety.
Therefore, your claim that night shifts are becoming more difficult is entirely reasonable and, according to Dr. Guo, management should treat it as “a signal of fatigue risk, which warrants an appropriate risk assessment.”
That said, it is not necessarily the experience of their colleagues, and Dr Guo said it was important for organizations not to assume that all older workers are less capable of working night shifts than their younger colleagues. Apart from anything else, that doesn’t really solve the health and safety problem.
“The logic of risk equity refers to whether the organization has truly controlled the safety hazard; by allowing younger doctors to have more unsafe nights, the overall fatigue hazard has simply been shifted from one group to the other.”
Which logic wins? Dr. Guo says it would be unwise to put one before the other; in fact, he suggested that both should be read together in cases like his.
“Formal equality reminds us that we should not stereotype based on age. On the other hand, risk equity reminds us that we should not ignore age, not hide behind equal treatment when the same workforce creates unequal security risks,” he says.
Jonathan Rivett is a Melbourne-based writer. He has written about work culture and careers for over a decade.From our partners
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