Sleep Loss and Performance in Health Care
The job demands of healthcare often prevent workers from getting the good, restful nights’ sleep they need. Although many workers want to ignore the impacts of this sleep loss, ultimately lack of sleep can result in detrimental effects on the overall healthcare system. In order to provide effective mitigations for these impacts, your organization must understand how sleep loss impacts human performance.
The Science of Sleep Loss
While sleep science and fatigue research covers many different focus areas, most scientists agree that a primary contributor to poor performance stems from sleep loss. Research has identified many different ways to understand and mitigate the impacts of sleep loss on human behavior.
These mitigations primarily address two aspects of sleep loss:
Sleep quantity refers to how much sleep someone has gotten during a specific time period. Too little sleep, for example less than 7-9 hours for an adult, could indicate a lack of sleep. Sleep quantity can be impacted by sleep quality- for, example, taking more than 20 minutes to fall asleep can ultimately reduce the amount of sleep you get over the course of the night.
Sleep quality refers to how well someone has slept. Sleep quality can be defined variously by how long it takes to fall asleep, how early you wake up, and whether or not- and for how long- you woke up during the night, among other factors. Whether or not you enter the deeper stages of sleep, and for how long, is also an important measure of sleep quality.
Sleep Loss Causes and Effects
Sleep loss can cause important problems with cognition that impact behavioral performance both on and off the job.
- Shift Work
- Sleep Disorders
- Long Work Hours
- Individual biology
- Unpredictable Work Hours
- Anxiety or Stress
- Difficulty concentrating
- Impaired decision making
- Lapses in attention
- Micro sleeps of 1-10 seconds
- Forgetfulness
- Failure to anticipate events
The intensity and impact of sleep loss effects can vary between people, but typically increase as sleep loss increases.
Sleep Loss Impacts in Healthcare Operations
Sleep loss causes poor judgement and mistakes, which lead to accidents and injuries on the job. Healthcare providers suffering from sleep loss might also have health problems that are caused by, or the cause of, the sleep loss and end up taking more leave from work than people who get the sleep quantity and quality they need.
There are many different sleep disorders that can impact sleep quantity or quality. Sleep onset insomnia occurs when it takes more than 20 minutes to fall asleep. Causes can include trying to sleep at an inappropriate time, such as the afternoon, as a result of shiftwork scheduling, or anxiety. Sleep quality can be impacted by sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome; disorders that prevent you from reaching deeper, restorative sleep. Healthcare workers might consider being tested for sleep disorders, if they are experiencing symptoms of sleep loss.
Not being able to obtain good sleep quantity or quality can be directly related to organizational factors, including your structure, culture, or work policies. Knowing how these aspects of environment impact healthcare personnel sleep can enable mitigation of negative effects.
Emergent Can Help
Everyone deserves a good night’s sleep; in order to reduce the impacts of sleep loss in your organization, you must examine environmental factors contributing to poor sleep quality and quantity in your workers.Emergent can help you identify those factors and provide suggestions for mitigating sleep loss and its consequences.
