Introduction Many hospital workers suffer from sleep disturbance due to shift work. The best way to mitigate the problem would be reducing night shift. However, that is commonly impossible in reality. Thus, we aimed to examine the factors associated with sleep disturbance and suggest better-rotating schedules for hospital workers.

Methods We used sleep questionnaires asking sleep disturbance including sleep onset and maintenance problems for measuring health outcomes. Also, We obtained a duty schedule of the workers for assessing exposure. We examined the effect of the pattern of shift schedule and amount of night shifts on sleep disturbance.

Results A total of 590 workers participated in this study. Female (95%) 3-rotating shift (92%) workers dominated. For workshift pattern, two consecutive night shifts increased the risk of sleep maintenance problem significantly. For the amount of night shift, two or more night shifts per week increased the risk of sleep onset problem significantly.

Conclusion Our results suggest that avoding consecutive night shifts and restricting night shift to one time per week would be helpful to prevent sleep disturbance in hospital workers.