Sleep Deprivation Negatively Effects Healthcare Providers

There are various examples of incidences where sleep deprivation has made 911 dispatchers issue wrong services and consequentially cause injuries or death to people needing the services. In one of the recent cases which happened in 2012, a 911 dispatcher in Maryland failed to order an ambulance despite the efforts of a woman who called to report her husband’s troubled breathing (Clarke). While the

Within the recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have been experiencing nursing shortages that necessitate more nurses to be present to compensate for the care needed to be given. This requires nurses to be dealt with imperative extended work hours along with their normal shifts with no denial or excuse accepted. Working extra hours are accompanied with negative effects that have an impact on the nurse, coworkers, and patients. A major concern that occurs with overtime is that nurses become fatigued or burnout. Fatigue that is experienced is a result of sleep deprivation from working overtime that is associated with arduousness neurobehavioral functioning

Inadequate sleep and resulting fatigue has major implications on the health and safety of registered nurses and can compromise patient care. Fatigue can also be costly to employers, resulting in increases in health care and workers’ compensation costs, early disability, recruitment and training costs, and legal fees. In 2014, the Professional Issues Panel on Nurse Fatigue led the effort to update ANA’s position statement on nurse fatigue. “Registered nurses and employers in all care settings must collaborate to reduce the risks of nurse fatigue and sleepiness associated with shift work and long work hours. Evidence-based strategies must be implemented to proactively address nurse fatigue and sleepiness and to promote the health, safety, and wellness of registered nurses and ensure optimal patient outcomes.” This statement articulates the American Nurses Association’s (ANA)

I really enjoyed reading your post it was very informative. Sleep deprivation can cause any individual health problems. Nurses need to stay healthy and take of themselves so that they can take care of their patients. You have some great suggestions for the unit manager to use to help nurses who suffer from sleep deprivation. Your suggestion of offering tuition reimbursement for nurses is a great idea. The unit manager could talk to human resource department to see if this is available and if the employee qualifies for it. If it is available the unit manager could give the nurse the information about it and direct her to the human resource department. The facility I work at offers tuition reimbursement with the sign of a two year contract

Bulman, reflects upon a study conducted by the U.S. National Institute of Justice, which highlights law enforcement officers' performances. The study gauged how sleep deprivation contributes to poor performance. The study also, reflects upon the benefit of working fewer ten-hour shifts on sleep disorders, and how incentive programs like this reduces overtime

A staggering 1.3 million hospitalized patients become victims to medical error and 100,000 deaths reported are due to preventable errors each year (Scott, Rogers, Hwang & Zhang, 2006). A recent study also suggests more than one quarter of nurses made at least one error, and more than one third made at least one near error while working more than 12 hours in a shift (Scott, Rogers, Hwang & Zhang, 2006 ) . Additional compelling evidenced surfaced through research reveals decreased awareness of situation, increased suffering, and occupational injury related to working 12 plus hours a day (Nurse Fatigue White Paper, 2013). Hence, based on evidence reviewed related to healthcare provider fatigue and my personal experience in a hospital setting,

Fatigue-related problems can lead to reduced job performance. Fatigue affects the ability to think clearly. Weinstein notes that, evidence is growing that long worked hours and shift work are linked to errors in the delivery of patient care, as a result, people who are fatigued are unable to contain their own level of problems. They are then unaware that they are not functioning as well or as safely as they would be if they were not fatigued, which then makes their work poor or unfinished (Weinstein 213). Poor or unfinished work can become a huge problem within a hospital.

When given no choice but to provide an overwhelming care to a ratio of patients not recommended, this will cause nurses to feel unsatisfied with their career. Because nurses are to render care with unrealistic workload, this may result in “chronic fatigue, poor sleep patterns, absenteeism, and job dissatisfaction” (Martin, 2011). It is but peace of mind that nurses acquire up arriving home. If they are disturbed during rest, or have to think about the hard work awaiting to be placed upon them, staying awake and alert during a shift, will result in an increase of incidents and unsatisfactory care; the evidence of the malpractice of nonmalificence and

Overwhelming fatigue can eventually lead to job burnout. In several studies, nurses have reported that they only get an average of five and a half hours of sleep or less in between consecutive shifts (Geiger-Brown, Rogers, Trinkoff, Kane, Barker Bausell, and Scharf, 2012), leading to sleep deprivation (Knoll, 2013). Furthermore, many have also reported that the amount of sleep they got was not enough to help them recover from the previous shift, leaving them feeling increasingly tired with each consecutive shift worked (Geiger-Brown et al., 2012).

before the intervention was implemented to discover the biggest barriers to sleep in the hospital. Then, after creating an intervention to reduce these barriers, the interventions were implemented for a certain time and then the patients were reassessed to determine if the interventions were successful (Bartik et al., 2009; Hopper, Fried, & Pisani 2015; Young, Bourgeois, Hilty, & Hardin, 2009). In this project’s intervention, information was combined from several different studies to create a sleep protocol that best fits the goal for this particular unit.

In fact, no saturation data was provided making it difficult to identify if the responses and statistics provided were accurate. The literature review only identifies one study on the impact of napping on critical care and ER nurses. Most of the studies cited in the literature review surrounding naps on night shift in employment fields with little similarity to nursing, which may limit the ability to infer the statistics from these studies onto nurses. In addition, based on the specialty of critical care and ER nursing it is difficult to distinguish if the results can be inferred to other populations. Additional weaknesses identified include that 23 percent of the respondents only worked night shifts potentially altering the perception and practices of these nurses. The researchers limited their study to one acute care community hospital and most of the participants were female. Additionally, the length of naps varied between the participants further altering perception since those who are able to nap longer may feel more rested. Participants averaged 17 years working as a nurse with no standard deviation provided. With this amount of work experience, a nurse is familiar with his or her circadian rhythms including sleep recovery and napping time required to function during a night shift. Moreover, the

Police duties can effect sleep in numerous ways. Extended work hours and revolving shifts disturb sleep-wake homeostasis, which is an internal timer that generates a sleep drive in the body. Also, officers often work extended shifts covering 12 hours or more, and unpredictable events that require overtime on a regular basis. In most organizations, work shifts are given by seniority so, there are many police officers who spend several years working an irregular combination of shifts. Irregular shift workers show abnormal sleep patterns and short sleep duration when compared with regular shift workers (Ramey,

The practice of out-of-hospital emergency medical care has changed considerably over the last 120 years [1]. Started in the early 1900s, ambulance services in the Commonwealth countries were originally small teams of volunteers trained by charitable organisations such as St John Ambulance who mostly responded to and provide transportation for work-traumatic and environmental injuries caused by increasing industrialisation [2]. In the majority of countries all over the world especially in the western countries nowadays, emergency medical systems have evolved into an organized health system that provide the very first emergency medical response to members of the community who are in an acute health crisis [3]. Resulted from this organisational model of pre-hospital emergency medical care are different paramedical roles in clinical practice requiring different educations and trainings as well as experience and competency of the clinical skills. One of the most highly skilled paramedical roles in this organisation of emergency medical services, intensive care paramedic, is what most paramedics aspire to.

During World War II, Russian scientists kept 5 test subjects awake for 15 days. When the experiment ended, 1 was dead, and the other 4 were cannibalizing the remains of the the man despite the steak next to them. When 20 Soviet Troopers came to retrieve the subjects, the ensuing battle left 3 soldiers dead, and 5 soldiers in a critical condition. Although we are not lab rats, in this modernizing world, we are facing some of the same problems. Sleep deprivation will lower our mental capacity, although napping can mitigate these symptoms. This article will outline the expected amounts of sleep, the disadvantages of sleep deprivation, and the benefits and drawbacks of napping

One more gap recognized in the article is that the author did not use the mixed linear models which is used to analyze the sleepiness data for individual variability, it was difficult in this study to identify individual differences in the need for rest. For example from the 20 nurses, 2 nurses did not take any break or naps and both worked on 2 hectic nights. However it is not known whether the nurses ever took a naps or rests, or if the cause for not taking naps was the condition of the nights (hectic nights). The unique of the study is that it was the only study conducted by systematic observations documented by the researcher and by sleep diary in an intensive care unit. Also two observations needed to be exclude from the study, due to the incident that a nurse have to leave the unit one