{"id":312,"date":"2011-04-18T01:43:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T06:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/?p=312"},"modified":"2011-04-18T01:43:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T06:43:19","slug":"risk-to-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/risk-to-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Risk to Health: Odd Work Schedules"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent reports of sleeping air-traffic controllers have brought to light a well-known — often ignored — hazard:\u00c2\u00a0 Night shift workers can have extreme difficulty concentrating and staying awake.<\/p>\n

“Government officials haven’t recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they’re doing shift word,” reports Dr. Charles Czeisler.\u00c2\u00a0 Dr. Czeisler is chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.\u00c2\u00a0 \"Sleep:<\/a>According to Dr. Czeisler, studies have shown that 30% to 50% of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job.\u00c2\u00a0 He calls it “preposterous” that this has happened only a few times among the thousands of controllers that work nights.<\/p>\n

Dr. Czeisler points out that the danger isn’t limited to air traffic controllers.\u00c2\u00a0 The same hazard can apply to truck and bus drivers, airline pilots, and those working in the maritime industry.\u00c2\u00a0 It also affects police, firefighters, emergency workers, factory workers, nurses and doctors, people in the media, cooks, hotel employees, and others on night or changing shifts.<\/p>\n

“We live in a very sleep-deprived society where many people are burning the candle at both ends, “Dr. Czeisler explained.\u00c2\u00a0 While a half-century ago, just 2% of people slept six hours or less per night, today it’s risen to 28%.<\/p>\n

So what is the solution?\u00c2\u00a0 “There should be sanctioned on-shift napping. That’s the way to handle night shift work,” said Gregory Belenky, a sleep expert at Washington State University in Spokane.<\/p>\n

A NASA study suggested that pilots on long-distance flights would perform much better if given a chance to take a scheduled nap, as long the rest was planned and the both pilots didn’t sleep at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet FAA rules prohibit sleeping on the job, even during breaks.<\/p>\n

Other possible solutions include making a point to get extra sleep, to counter the effects of sleep deprivation.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, knowing that this can be a significant problem calls for proactive solutions from those who engage in shift work and late-night work-hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Government officials haven’t recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they’re doing shift word,” reports Dr. Charles Czeisler. Dr. Czeisler is chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. According to Dr. Czeisler, studies have shown that 30% to 50% of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job. To find out how this impacts our safety, read the complete post, “Risk to Health: Odd Work Schedules”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-coaching","category-physical-healing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mentalhealth-online.com\/mentalhealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}