Articles Tagged with ''sleep''

Insomnia is costing U.S. companies more than $63 billion a year, according to a new white paper that examines the toll that insufficient sleep takes on safety and productivity at work. Entitled Sick, Unsafe, and Unproductive: Poor Employee Sleep Is Bad for Business, the publication from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)  notes that sleep is a basic biological need, and getting less than seven hours of it a night (for the average person) can have serious detrimental consequences for an individuals’ long-term health, safety, and performance.

As most parts of the country prepare to turn clocks ahead one hour, the National Safety Council is cautioning employers that workers in certain positions and industries who already have a higher risk of being drowsy may be even more tired than usual next Monday. According to a new NSC report, Tired at Work: How fatigue affects our bodies, shift workers, medical staff, emergency responders, military personnel, any worker over age 40, and transportation professionals – especially those who work rotating or night shifts – always are at increased risk for circadian misalignment, which occurs when we force ourselves to stay awake at hours when our bodies believe we should be sleeping.

During an event Monday morning, Deborah A.P Hersman, president and CEO of the National Safety Council, and Charles A Czeisler, PhD, FRCP, director of the Sleep Matters Initiative at Brigham Health, explained the NSC’s new Fatigue Cost Calculator for Employers — an online tool that provides companies with a snapshot of not only their losses, but also their return on investment if they implement employee sleep health education programs that screen for untreated sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia.

A majority of America’s nurses admit they are stressed out, consuming too much junk food and getting too little sleep, says a Ball State University study. The Impact of Perceived Stress and Coping Adequacy on the Health of Nurses: A Pilot Investigation, published in the online journal Nursing Research and Practice, found that nurses with high stress and poor coping had difficulty with patients, working in teams, communicating with co-workers and performing their jobs efficiently.

On March 20-23, 2017, thirteen participants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attended the 10th International Conference on Managing Fatigue, in San Diego, California. This year’s conference was the first held in the U.S. since 2009, and was attended by over 260 scientists and industry experts from around the world.

March is Sleep Awareness Month. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society determined that adults require at least 7 hours of sleep per day to promote optimal health. Short sleep duration (< 7 hours per day) has been linked to various negative health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression, as well as safety issues related to drowsy driving and injuries.

The engineer who fell asleep on the job, just before his train derailed in the Bronx, killing four people, is suing his former employer for $10 million dollars. More than 70 people were injured in the 2013 crash of a Metro-North train.

Sleep loss and poor working conditions are the most important causes of occupational fatigue—which can impair mental and physical performance with the potential for serious errors and injuries, reports a review and update in the October Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).