Impact of shift duration on alertness among air‐medical emergency care clinician shift workers

Background Greater than half of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) shift workers report fatigue at work and most work long duration shifts. We sought to compare the alertness level of EMS shift workers by shift duration. Methods We used a multi‐site, 14‐day prospective observational cohort study desig...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of industrial medicine 2019-04, Vol.62 (4), p.325-336
Main Authors: Patterson, P. Daniel, Weaver, Matthew D., Markosyan, Mark A., Moore, Charity G., Guyette, Frank X., Doman, Jack M., Sequeira, Denisse J., Werman, Howard A., Swanson, Doug, Hostler, David, Lynch, Joshua, Templin, Megan A., Rozario, Nigel L., Russo, Lindsey, Hines, Linda, Swecker, Karen, Runyon, Michael S., Buysse, Daniel J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alertness
Emergency medical care
Emergency medical services
fatigue
Health services
Medical personnel
Medical research
Night shifts
Nighttime
Psychomotor performance
Shift work
sleep
Sleep deprivation
Vigilance
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Summary:Background Greater than half of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) shift workers report fatigue at work and most work long duration shifts. We sought to compare the alertness level of EMS shift workers by shift duration. Methods We used a multi‐site, 14‐day prospective observational cohort study design of EMS clinician shift workers at four air‐medical EMS organizations. The primary outcome was behavioral alertness as measured by psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT) at the start and end of shifts. We stratified shifts by duration (
ISSN:0271-3586
1097-0274
DOI:10.1002/ajim.22956