8/3/2023 0 Comments Graveyard shift worker![]() Working with 98 Buffalo, N.Y., police officers, the researchers looked for metabolic syndrome - a combination of symptoms that contribute to poor heart health and diabetes, including large waist circumference, elevated triglyceride levels, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high levels of glucose when not eating. Night work and fatigue may also contribute to the risk of heart disease and cancer, according to research by Violanti, Vila and colleagues ( Policing, Vol. "When you’re drowsy, local parts of the brain shut down for milliseconds or seconds at a time, then come back online," he says. Neither is it safe for more routine activities, such as driving. That’s not a recipe for good decisions, says Vila, especially when officers must make decisions about whether to use deadly force - often in ambiguous, fast-paced, high-risk situations. That resulting crankiness and warped perspective can interfere with one’s ability to make sound decisions and manage people effectively, and can increase the frequency of negative encounters. Fatigue, in turn, worsens moods, decreases cognitive abilities and reflexes, and makes people more vulnerable to disease, says Vila. Working against a person’s natural sleep cycle causes such sleep disorders, as well as fatigue. According to Vila’s research, roughly 40 percent of the nation’s 861,000 police officers work more than 12 hours a day - and a similar proportion suffer from a sleep disorder such as insomnia or excessive sleepiness. Also, many officers seek night shifts to get overtime pay, he says. ![]() Not only are these highly stressful, performance-draining shifts being foisted upon the least experienced officers, but the young officers aren’t given time to adjust their sleep schedules for night work. But that seesaw scheduling approach is a doubly bad idea, says John Violanti, PhD, an organizational psychologist who was a New York state trooper for 23 years. They’ll often work a few days during normal daytime hours, then either work an extra-long shift that carries on until the morning, or take a day off, rest, then work a full night shift. It’s common for police departments, for example, to require rookies and lower-ranking officers to bear the brunt of night shifts. That’s especially dangerous for people whose jobs require them to be on high alert and make split-second, life-or-death decisions during the night, such as medical personnel or police officers. All the sleep in the world won’t make up for circadian misalignment. It doesn’t matter whether they get enough sleep during the daytime, she says. ![]() People who work the night shift must combat their bodies’ natural rest period while trying to remain alert and high functioning. Our bodies and brains evolved to relax and cool down after dark and to spring back into action come morning. The circadian clock is essentially a timer that lets various glands know when to release hormones and also controls mood, alertness, body temperature and other aspects of the body’s daily cycle. That’s because working at night runs counter to the body’s natural circadian rhythm, says Charmane Eastman, PhD, a physiological psychologist at Rush University in Chicago. Poor scheduling, combined with unhealthy attitudes about the need for sleep, can cause major problems for night workers. Learning healthy sleeping practices is "just as important as occupational training," he says. "The basic take-home is that fatigue decreases safety," says Bryan Vila, PhD, a sleep expert and criminal justice researcher at Washington State University–Spokane. Now, psychologists are gaining a better understanding of how exactly night and shift work affect cognitive performance and which interventions and policies could keep shift workers and the public safer. Those effects extend beyond the workers themselves, as many of us share the road with night-driving truckers, count on the precision of emergency-room workers and rely on the protection of police and national security personnel at all hours. ![]() That means a significant sector of the nation’s work force is exposed to the hazards of working nights, which include restlessness, sleepiness on the job, fatigue, decreased attention and disruption of the body’s metabolic process. Nearly 15 million Americans work a permanent night shift or regularly rotate in and out of night shifts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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