IPHM Sleep and Shift Work Conference
This page features current research findings and popular press articles regarding sleep and shift work concerns, largely taken from articles by or featuring the faculty of the 2012 HSPH IPHM Conference: “Sleep and Shift Work: Optimizing Productivity and Health Management in the 24/7 Global Economy.”
A big thank-you to all of our conference faculty, participants, and planners for making this conference a huge success!
Sleep Problems in Police Officers Take Heavy Toll
Anahad O’Connor
“More than a third of police officers have a sleep disorder, and those who do are more likely to experience heart disease, problems with job performance and rage toward suspects and citizens, a new study suggests.”
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Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Insomnia Risks and Costs: Health, Safety, and Quality of Life
Mark R. Rosekind, PhD; Kevin B. Gregory, BS
“The effect of insomnia on next-day functioning, health, safety, and quality of life results in a substantial societal burden and economic cost. The annual direct cost of insomnia has been estimated in the billions of US dollars and is attributed to the association of insomnia with the increased risk of certain psychiatric and medical comorbidities that result in increased healthcare service utilization.”
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Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Driver Medical Examiner Registry Released; Careers in Gear; April 2012
Heather
“The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released its long-anticipated national registry for certified medical examiners last week, requiring medical professionals who examine commercial drivers to receive training on driver health issues.”
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Posted: Monday, September 24, 2012
Railroaders’ Guide to Healthy Sleep Website; 2012
Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School
“Steps to improve your sleep and make a real difference in your life.”
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Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2012
Insomnia and the Performance of US Workers: Results from the America Insomnia Survey; September 2011; Sleep
Ronald C. Kessler, PhD; Patricia A. Berglund, MBA; Catherine Coulouvrat, MD; Goeran Hajak, MD; Thomas Roth, PhD; Victoria Shahly, PhD; Alicia C. Shillington, PhD; Judith L. Stephenson, SM; James K. Walsh, PhD
“We address the limitations of currently available estimates of the workplace costs of insomnia in the current report by using survey data collected in the America Insomnia Survey (AIS),1 a national survey of employed subscribers to a very large US national health plan (over 34 million members) who were selected using probability methods that did not oversample subscribers with a diagnosis of or treatment for insomnia. We estimate the associations of insomnia with work performance controlling for a wide range of comorbid conditions.”
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Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Fatigued Railroad Workers Led to Cause of 2011 Train Collision in Iowa, says NTSB; April 2012; Official NTSB Press Release
NTSB Office of Public Affairs
“The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) today determined that the probable cause of a rear-end collision between two BNSF Railway trains was the striking train crew’s fatigue. Both crewmembers had fallen asleep, which led to their failure to comply with the signal indication requiring them to operate at a restricted speed and stop short of the standing train.”
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Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Insomnia with Objective Short Sleep Duration is Associated with a High Risk for Hypertension; April 2009; Sleep
Alexandros N. Vgontzas, MD; Duanping Liao, PhD; Edward O. Bixler, PhD; George P. Chrousos, MD; Antonio Vela-Bueno, MD
“Based on these observations, we speculate that objective short sleep duration may be an index of the biological severity of the disorder and that insomniacs with short sleep duration are at high risk for adverse medical outcomes. To test this hypothesis, we examined the joint effect of the complaints of chronic insomnia and poor sleep (a milder form of insomnia), and objective sleep duration on the prevalent hypertension in a large cross-sectional population-based sample from central Pennsylvania. We hypothesized that chronic insomnia is associated with a significant risk of hypertension, and that the comorbidity of insomnia and hypertension is enhanced by objective short sleep duration.”
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Posted: Monday, September 17, 2012
A Serious Approach to Sleep: Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Sleep Medicine and Interview with Paul S. Valentine, MBA (scroll to bottom); September 2009; Sleep Review
Greg Thompson
“As a newly minted Sleep Program of Distinction, Brigham and Women’s Hospital affirms the growing importance of sleep medicine across the health care spectrum.”
“As president and CEO of Sleep HealthCenters LLC for the past 6 years, Paul S. Valentine, MBA, says the ‘one location’ for all services model has served patients well.”
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Posted: Friday, September 14, 2012
The Effect of Rest Breaks on Time to Injury – A Study on Work-Related Ladder-Fall Injuries in the United States; 2006; Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment, & Health
Wirtz A; Lombardi DA; Courtney TK; Christiani DC; Folkard S; Perry MJ
“Rest breaks and other work-related temporal factors, such as time spent on task, influence the accumulation of fatigue, and thus impact occupational injury risk. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of rest breaks on “time to injury” (the time between start of work and injury) for injured workers treated in a nationally representative sample of US emergency departments.”
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Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2012
A Method for Measuring and Modeling the Physiological Traits Causing Obstructive Sleep Apnea; Journal of Applied Physiology
Andrew Wellman; Danny J. Eckert; Amy S. Jordan; Bradley A. Edwards; Chris L. Passaglia; Andrew C. Jackson; Shiva Gautam; Robert L. Owens; Atul Malhotra; David P. White
“In this study, we present a noninvasive method for measuring four important physiological traits causing OSA: 1) pharyngeal anatomy/collapsibility, 2) ventilatory control system gain (loop gain), 3) the ability of the upper airway to dilate/stiffen in response to an increase in ventilatory drive, and 4) arousal threshold.”
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Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Sleep Deprivation: What Does It Mean for Public Safety Officers?; March 2009; National Institute of Justice Journal
Bryan Vila, PhD
“When I speak to police officers about my research on sleep, job performance and shift work, they always ask, ‘What’s the best shift?’ I always answer, ‘That’s the wrong question. Most shift arrangements have good and bad aspects.’ The right question is this: ‘What is the best way to manage shift work, keep our officers healthy and maintain high performance in our organization?’”
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Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Sleep Apnea and Daytime Sleepiness and Fatigue: Relation to Visceral Obesity, Insulin Resistance, and Hypercytokinemia; March 2000; Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Alexandros N. Vgontzas; Dmitris A. Papanicolaou; Edward O. Bixler; Kenneth Hopper; Angela Lotsikas; Huong-Mo Lin; Anthony Kales; George P. Chrousos
“We conclude that there is a strong independent association among sleep apnea, visceral obesity, insulin resistance and hypercytokinemia, which may contribute to the pathological manifestations and somatic sequelae of this condition.”
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Posted: Monday, September 10, 2012
Deadliest Danger Isn’t at the Rig but on the Road; May 2012; Nytimes.com
Ian Urbina
“Over the past decade, more than 300 oil and gas workers like Mr. Roth were killed in highway crashes, the largest cause of fatalities in the industry. Many of these deaths were due in part to oil field exemptions from highway safety rules that allow truckers to work longer hours than drivers in most other industries, according to safety and health experts.”
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Posted: Friday, September 7,2012
Response Surface Mapping of Neurobehavioral Performance: Testing the Feasibility of Split Sleep Schedules for Space Operations; Fall 2008; Acta Astronautica
Daniel J. Mollicone; Hans P.A. Van Dongen, PhD; Naomi L. Rogers, PhD; David F. Dinges, PhD
“The results suggest that reductions in total daily sleep result in a near-linear accumulation of impairment regardless of whether sleep is scheduled as a consolidated nocturnal sleep period or split into a nocturnal anchor sleep period and a diurnal nap. Thus, split sleep schedules are feasible and can be used to enhance the flexibility of sleep/work schedules for space operations involving restricted nocturnal sleep due to mission-critical task scheduling.”
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Posted: Thursday, September 6, 2012
Fatigued Driver, An Unsafe Operator, and Ineffective Oversight Caused Deadly Virginia Motorcoach Crash; July 2012; Official NTSB Press Release
NTSB Office of Public Affairs
“A severely fatigued motorcoach driver who lost control of the vehicle, the failure of Sky Express Inc. to manage safe driving practices and a lack of adequate regulatory oversight was the probable cause of a fatal motorcoach crash in Doswell, Va., last May, the National Transportation Safety Board said today.”
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Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Impact of Sleepiness and Sleep Deficiency on Public Health—Utility of Biomarkers; October 2011; Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine
Charles A. Czeisler, PhD, MD
“Sleep disorders and sleep deficiency are important causes of adverse health effects and increased mortality in the United States and worldwide. Sleep deficiency can also result in myriad adverse behavioral consequences, including profound sleepiness, cognitive slowing, automatic behavior, attentional failures and performance degradation, errors, and accidents. It is important to recognize that sleepiness and sleep deficiency are not synonymous.”
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Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2012
911 Dispatcher Caught Snoring on the Job; May 2012; NBC Washington
Tisha Thompson; Rick Yarborough
“Imagine if in your moment of need, you call 911 and you get…a snoring dispatcher. That’s what happened to this woman.”
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Posted: Friday, August 31, 2012
Biomarkers of Sleep Apnea; July 2012; CHEST
“The discovery of an ideal biomarker for OSA [obstructive sleep apnea] has the potential to provide information related to diagnosis, severity, prognosis, and response to treatment. In addition, because large-scale randomized controlled trials are both ethically and logistically challenging in assessing hard cardiovascular outcomes, certain biomarkers may be reasonable surrogate outcome measures. This article reviews the literature related to potential biomarkers of OSA with the recognition that an ideal biomarker does not exist at this time.”
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Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2012
NTSB: Driver Fatigue Led to Deadly Bronx Bus Crash; June 2012; abclocal.go.com
Joan Lowy
“A tour bus crash last year that claimed 15 lives was caused by a driver suffering from too little sleep and a bus company that provided too little safety oversight, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.”
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Posted: Friday, August 24, 2012