Modern nursing has improved worldwide in many ways except one; nurses do not maintain their physiological sleep requirements for work. Many nurses to arrive for night work sleepy and experience excessive sleepiness during working hours. Like air traffic controllers and long distance truck drivers, nurses cannot afford unpredictable lapses in vigilance and decision making when working at night or as a result of shiftwork. Nurses work and live within several cultural contexts including their individual families, the workplace, and the culture of nursing itself. Because the science of sleep is still emerging, many health care institutions and academic nursing programs have not integrated sleep physiology, sleep hygiene or countermeasures for sleepiness into the education and practice. Too many nursing shift workers are excessive sleepy at night, which results nursing errors that are predictable, but very preventable. Thus, the culture of nursing and nursing workplaces must urgently address this critical problem.