Shift work: When sleep deprivation is an occupational hazard

Pilots, police officers, nurses and doctors, emergency workers, cleaning service providers, road crews, construction laborers, bartenders, hospitality employees, and IT workers all share one thing in common: they often work at night or overnight, and that can mean dangerous problems with sleep deprivation. How does the night shift (aka “graveyard shift” or “third shift”) affect their performance on the job, and might their sleep deprivation affect us as well?

It goes without saying that people who work nights or overnight shifts are the most obvious victims of lost sleep. Take a look at what SHC has uncovered since early December:

• A December 6, 2016 article in Digital Journal drives home the reality that shift work is not heart healthy, and women appear to have a bigger risk for suffering coronary heart disease because of it, according to research published by Knowridge Science Report on December 2, 2016.
• A study of commercial pilots discussed in Sleep Science (December 14, 2016) might make you a little more curious about the fitness of the captain of your red-eye flight. Results showed pilots who primarily worked night or overnight shifts were more likely to be sleep deprived, overweight, and suffering from multiple chronic health problems.
• So-called “nightwalkers” (people who work night or graveyard shifts) also struggle with the hazards of maintaining relationships, as demonstrated in this personal essay in The New York Times (December 23, 2016), “The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy,” in which a sleep-disordered woman opts to work overnight as a freelancer because it is the only time she is actually awake enough to get her work done.
• Even this business blogger, with his humbug-free Christmas Day post for Live Trading News, encourages us all to get a good night’s sleep, and especially those who work overnight shifts.
• A Mayo Clinic advice column in MedicalXPress (December 27, 2016) offers these tidbits for surviving the night shift.
• As a patient, you might also be concerned about surviving the care coming from a healthcare worker who is performing the night shift: check out the answer to this question posed at Sleep Junkies on December 28, 2016): “Would you trust a doctor who’s been awake for 28 hours?”
• Sleep was recognized by this Texas county as critical to the job performance of first responders and emergency medical services workers (KVUE, January 2, 2017); to help these workers to withstand the demands of crisis management, they’ve been provided with “safe sleep rooms” to protect them against sleep deprivation.
• One commentary on fatigue at Officer.com (January 3, 2017) calls out the very dangerous reality of sleep deprivation among police officers; the author proposes restorative naps built into night shifts for graveyard cops to help fix this ongoing problem.
• This scientist suggests that all of us should start our school days and jobs at 10am or later, and has some data (published in Collective Evolution, January 5, 2017) to back it up.
• Today’s post at Sleep Resolutions covers all the basics: What is shift work disorder, who is most at risk, and its chief causes.