Introduction
The effects of sleep disorders and fatigue on public safety officers is a social issue that needs to be addressed with more vigor and urgency so that the key issues and factors that are salient and of utmost forbearance are dissected and brought to the fore and solutions delineated that are structured around the tenets of ensuring for better organization, health concern, social attention and family relations redress for the case of the police officers.
Main body
The police forces face a whole multitude of stressors that have been shown to impact negatively on their well-being. One of the major sources of these stresses has been attributed to the rotating work shifts and extended working hours that result in sleep deprivation. It is seen that while the work hours in many professions are standardized and regulated, no such structure exists for the police forces. Conversely, “the officers often are overly fatigued due to the long and erratic work hours, overtime assignments, night schools; long hours spent waiting to testify and the emotional and physical demands of their jobs, coupled with the need to meet family and peers demands” (Armstrong, 2000). The one mediator to these adverse effects on the health, social, family, and work performance has been related to the traumatic and non-traumatic duty-related stressors in police officers that can be directly attributed to sleep deprivation.
An initial review of the literature indicates that though the officers provide vital services to society, their work is characterized by a whole cocktail of stressful arrangements that have been shown to have profound bearings on their lives. These are seen to impact negatively on health, work performance, social and family wellbeing. Conversely, a lot of proposals and policies have been advanced in an attempt to ameliorate these negative impacts on the police forces. However, sleep deprivation is a direct consequence of the long hours at work; sleep work cycles and shifts arrangements have not elicited enough focus. This is especially a limitation in literature when it has been advanced that “the circadian control of endogenous regulators have been documented as causing misalignment of the body’s biological rhythms and the external demands of the police officers” (John,2007), which have been advanced as adversarial to the police officers well being.
The effects of sleep disorders and fatigue on public safety officers is a social issue that needs to be addressed with more vigor and urgency so that the key issues and factors that are salient and of utmost forbearance are dissected and brought to the fore and solutions delineated that are structured around the tenets of ensuring for better organization, health concern, social attention and family relations redress for the case of the police officers.
The modern work arrangements have resulted in a new phenomenon of working in shifts as people seek to maximize possible job opportunities in the different professions and make more money to meet the increasing financial obligations given the current hardships and cash-strapped economies. A lot of employees now put up more hours at work or have to work over extended night shifts. While this is widely viewed as a noble attempt at productivity and meeting these financial obligations and maximizing available employment opportunities, these work arrangements have been associated with negative impacts on the populations, largely due to the effects of fatigue and sleep deprivation. “It has been advanced that sleep-related fatigue degrades performance, productivity, and safety as well as health and wellbeing” (Carvalko, 2001).
Considerable evidence abides that there is an increased likelihood for illnesses and injury among employees working long-schedule and schedules involving unconventional shift arrangements. For example, empirical evidence abides that the problem of sleep deprivation has compounded effects on the body of an individual. According to the villa (2008), “the effects of lack of sleep have been equated to the changes in ability and judgment as seen in a person under the influence of alcohol. An individual who has gone for 17 hours without sleep has been equated to a person who has.05 blood alcohol level whereas 24 hours sleep deprivation is like a.1 blood alcohol level”. It should be borne in mind here that the upper limit for drink driving is at the upper limit of.08 in most states in the United States. According to a report published by the American Medical Association (2005) as cited by Villa (2008), “residents working a heavy call schedule were found to have a higher degree of impairment than controls with a 0.05% blood alcohol level when performing tests of sustained attention, vigilance, and simulated driving tasks”. The authors found that residents were often unaware of their impairment
John (2007) buttresses this point when he points out that “sleep deprivation can reduce attention and vigilance by 50%, decision making ability by 50%, communication skills by 30% and memory by 20%”. This is compounded by scientific evidence that suggests that the effect occurs at the subconscious levels and an individual may not even be aware of this. Thus “while putting in more hours may be viewed as being macho and being a hard worker real health issues abides that calls for a change in attitude, coordination and informed redress of the pertinent issues” (Armstrong, 2007, p. 23). As Carvako (2001) intones, ‘if you sleep deprive your brain, you are going to pay for that ……and we are paying with our lives (p. 3). John (2007) has even pointed that “fatigue costs the US economy a projected $136 billion per year in health-related lost productivity alone”.
Perhaps a better understanding of the effects of sleep deprivation may be generated through an analysis of normal body functioning. The physiological functions of human beings are oriented in such a way that activity should be done during the daytime and resting be done at night. Shifts turn human beings, therefore, into nocturnal (night-orientated) beings. As a result, sleep patterns are interfered with causing psychological disturbances that are associated with sleep deprivation. “The commonly felt effect of sleep deprivation is fatigue, a kind of exhaustion that is associated with low energy” (John, 2007). Since human beings are accustomed to being awake during the day and sleeping at night, working at night leaves them worn out as their bodies are left without sufficient energy to carry out even the lightest duties. It is these fatigues that are seen to impact the health and wellbeing of the individuals.
The long-term effects of sleep deprivation are biological. In the long term, “people who work these shifts have been found to have an increased risk of cardiovascular, psychoneurotic and gastrointestinal diseases” (Violant, 1996). “Women shift workers experience changes in their hormonal and reproductive functions as well as family roles” (Armea, 2006). Other effects include stress, shift-lag syndrome, psychosomatic problems, and hardships in family and social contacts. “Physiological functions such as body hormone production, thermal regulation, heartbeat, gastric activity, blood pressure, and the sleep/wake cycle, all of which have rhythms of around 24 hours are also impaired” (Armstrong, 2000)
One of the professions that have especially been affected by these shift arrangements is the police force department. This is because “apart from having to be on duty in the assigned shifts, they have to put in more hours as they have to make off-duty court appearances, late arrests, reports writing, voluntary overtime, moonlighting and provide backups among others” (Armea, 2006). One of the issues that have been seen to compound the situation is the fact that there are not enough officers in large enough numbers to provide for the services needed to maintain law and order in society. This has resulted in the staff strapped administrators in most police departments to assign and offer more overtime to the officers available.
The issue of sleep deprivation becomes more poignant when the nature of the work of the police officers is brought to the fore and dissected in detail. Police officers are charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of the population. The nature of their works entails that they must deal with criminal elements at one point in time or another and conversely they have been licensed to handle guns among other weapons necessary for ensuring law and order. In the course of their work, the police may be involved in high-speed pursuits, deal with suicidal elements, mediate domestic disputes, or intervene in brawls, fights, confrontations among others. “These are situations that call for utmost concentration and alertness and a mistake or a wrong word said at such circumstances may result into untoward outcomes” (Armstrong, 2000). Police fatigue may for example result in fatal shootings and consequent loss of lives, injuries, or incapacitation.
The lack of enough sleep has also been found to have other far-reaching impacts on the police forces. “The sleep-wake cycles that disrupt and misalign the biological rhythms of the body have for example been shown to give rise to sleep-wake complaints, mood disturbance, decreased work performance and physical malaise, and increased use of sedative-hypotonic drugs among the police officers” (Kamerow & Ford, 1998). The shift arrangements have also been associated with other negative impacts on the forces, largely due to the stressful nature of their work that has more often than not been attributed to sleep deficiencies. “Researchers have for example documented evidence that police officers have increased rates of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal disorders” (Armstrong, 2000). A study of police force work arrangements, workability, and health as presented by Armea (2006) have also shown that “among policewomen with increased depressive symptoms, the prevalence of suicide ideation increased by 116% for every 10-unit increase of hours worked on day shift whereas among policemen with higher posttraumatic stress disorder (PSTD), symptoms, the prevalence of suicide ideation increased by 13% with every 10-unit increase in the percentage of hours worked on afternoon shift”.
These findings have been buttressed by the works of Violant (1996) who has indicated that “the work arrangements of police officers interfere with the social and family life with officers registering divorce rates twice the national wide rates, and divorce rates three times the national average”. “The Sleep deprivation can also reduce attention and vigilance by 50%, decision making ability by 50%, communication skills by 30% and memory by 20%” (Armstrong, 2000). “This may interfere with work performance and basic survival issues like patrol tactics, firearm safety, and pursuit driving” (Villa, 2006). “The immediate consequences of all the above have been positively correlated with poor job performance, accidents prevalence, impaired physical wellbeing, and increased use of alcohol” (Kamerow & Ford, 1998).
From the above findings, it becomes clear that the effects of sleep deprivation have significant impacts on police forces. “The degree of these stressful conditions have been analyzed based on shift arrangements, gender, and age in an attempt to derive understandings on how well officers adjust and cope as researchers try to work out a solution and ameliorate the advance effects of having to work in shifts and the correlates of fatigue” (Armstrong, 2007). It has for example been advanced that “the shift lengths that are compressed have fewer impacts on individuals” (Kamerow & Ford, 1998). Other findings have reported that “older people are less likely to cope with fatigue and sleep disruption, hence suggesting that shift arrangements have more profound bearings on an older individual as compared to younger fellows” (Melekian, 2000). “It is seen that older officers who can choose when to take their shifts are likely to register less fatigue” (Violant, 1996). Thus, experience, which comes with age, has been seen as a key factor in determining adjustability. For example Kamerow & Ford (1998) in their study concludes that “age and experience explained a substantial amount of the fatigue reported by night-shift officers in departments that made shift assignments based on department needs alone and the reverse was true in departments where preference in shift assignment was based on seniority”. However, Armstrong (2000) could not find any such significant differences based on a study of over 120 officers aged between 20 and 50.
Personal circumstances as assessed by marital status have also been addressed by a few researchers with a major aggregation towards the idea that these may not have a bearing on how well an individual copes. Armstrong (2000) has however documented that those officers having small children as being hugely affected. The analysis of resilience as assessed by gender has also generally pointed that women are more adversely affected by shift arrangements. This may be attributed to the fact that women officers have to bear more domestic responsibilities as compared to men. It has been documented that “women are more prone to commit suicide due to stress-related effects that are seen to be exacerbated by shift arrangements” (Armea, 2006: Violent, 1996). Not all authors agree, however. For example, Villa (2000) based on a survey of 80 officers found that “although women officers tended to show poorer quality sleep on standard scientific measures than men, few women reported feeling tired at the start of their shifts”.
Another area that has generated mixed findings is in the assessment of the best shifts that are seen to have fewer impacts on the individual officers as assessed by age, gender, or experience. While there have been repeated calls for such studies to be carried out, researchers have tended to shy away from such studies.
Conclusion
The impact of shift-work on the body clock has however been shown to have adverse physiological, psychological, and behavioral impacts that interfere with the health of the individual, job performance, and family and social relations. Many of these effects can be prevented or reduced by an integrated effort on the part of the department and officer to develop countermeasures to shift fatigue. These include designing effective shift schedules, orientation and education for the officer and family, shift proofing the home, promoting a healthy diet and exercise, considering new research on light exposure and napping, and developing skills in sleep preparation and stress coping.
References
- Armea, D. F., (2006). Relationship between sleep inertia and sleepiness: Cumulative effects of four nights of sleep disruption/reduction on performance following abrupt nocturnal awakenings. Journal of Biological Psychology.vol 3, No.27
- Armstrong, N.M., (2000). Psychological and psycho-physiological effects of shift work. Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment Health, Vol.16, no. 67.
- Carvalko, M., (2001). Locomotive engineers and their spouses: Coffee consumption, mood, and sleep reports. Ergonomics journal, Vol. 36, 233.
- John, G. D., (2007). Social network development and functioning during a life transition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 50, 305-313.
- Kamerow, C.K., and Ford, S., (1998). The social Readjustment Rating Scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11: 213-218.
- Melekian, Z. (2000). Shift-work and industrial injuries at a chemical plant in southeast Texas. Journal of Chronobiology International, 2, 7:155-164.
- Villa, O. (2008). Educational programs for shift-workers, their families, and prospective shift-workers. Journal of counseling psychology, 4, 36: 199-209.
- Violant, K., (1996). Have we underestimated shift-workers’ problems? Evidence from a reminiscence study. Journal of counseling psychology, 22, 12: 307-312.