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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:55 am
Time: 2:55 am
Results for shift work
3 results foundAuthor: Violanti, John M. Title: Shifts, Extended Work Hours, and Fatigue: An Assessment of Health and Personal Risks for Police Officers Summary: The physical health, psychological well-being, safety and efficiency at work are important factors for any police agency to consider. When one considers the monetary and human costs of fatigued officers, it is essential to promote scientific awareness and subsequent plausible interventions. The rate of officers dying from health related problems and accidents for example have surpassed the rate of officers dying from homicide. Fatigued or tired police officers are also a danger to themselves as well as the public they serve. Little is known of the long term impact of shift work and extended work hours on police officers, and no direct scientifically rigorous exposure assessment of shift work has yet been done. The goal of this investigation was to examine police officer exposure to shift work and the association of such exposure with adverse health and psychological outcomes. This study examined two groups of police officers. The first group consisted of 464 currently employed police officers. We assessed shift work impact on health and psychological well-being on this group based on objective day-today payroll work record data. The second group consisted of a mortality cohort (deceased officers) of ever employed police officers, 1950-2005. The cohort covered an estimated 100,000 person-years of observation and was utilized to assess the impact of shift work on causes of police officer deaths. This information was obtained from the U.S. National Death Index (classified by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), 9th edition). Risk analysis among currently employed officers was performed for outcomes of subclinical disease based on independent variables of shift work, sleep quality, stress biomarkers (cortisol), and lifestyle covariates such as physical activity, diet, smoking and alcohol abuse. Additional analysis involved calculation of risk for specific causes of death in police officers compared to the U.S. General Population and internal police comparisons by shift work patterns. Details: Buffalo, NY: Department of Social & Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Health Professions, State University of NY at Buffalo, 2012. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 24, 2013 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237964.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/237964.pdf Shelf Number: 127371 Keywords: FatiguePolice HealthPolice SafetyPolice ShiftsPolice Work SchedulingShift Work |
Author: Waggoner, Lauren B. Title: Police Officer Fatigue: The Effects of Consecutive Night Shift Work on Police Officer Performance Summary: Police officers frequently work long, irregular and fatiguing shifts, including night shifts. The effects of night shift work on both waking alertness and ability to sleep during the day may result in degraded police officer performance during operational tasks such as driving and decision making, especially in ambiguous and fast-paced situations. Such decrements in performance by police officers can have catastrophic effects on officers, police departments, municipal governments, and the public through increasing the risk of accidents and injuries. This study examined the effects of consecutive night shift work on police officer performance using a unique research design combining controlled laboratory measures of performance and police officers working actual night shifts in the field. Measures included simulated routine driving, psychomotor vigilance, and simulated deadly force decision making as well as subjective sleepiness. N=30 police patrol officers were studied on two separate occasions during their normal duty cycle: in the morning immediately following five consecutive night shifts, and at the same time in the morning following three days off duty. Mixed-effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed degraded simulated driving (F1,78=6.78; P=0.011), vigilance (F1,161=14.06; P<0.001), and increased subjective sleepiness (F1,84=96.99; P<0.001) following five consecutive night shifts on duty compared to three days off duty. Repeated measures ANOVA also showed significantly different false alarm rates (F1,53=4.82; P=0.033) with higher instances of false alarms occurring following the night shift condition, and sensitivity, or ability to detect a threat presented, (F1,53=5.94; P=0.018) with increased signal sensitivity seen during the control condition. Police officers experienced degraded simulated driving and psychomotor vigilance, impaired simulated deadly force decision making performance, and higher subjective sleepiness following consecutive night shifts on duty. These results indicate that police officers are suffering the effects of night shift work on operational performance, creating a safety risk for themselves and the public. Additionally, the success of this study, involving combined laboratory and field data collection, indicates that the study is a useful approach for investigating the relationship between shift work induced fatigue and operational performance. Details: Pullman, WA: Washington State University, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, 2012. 169p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 16, 2013 at: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/handle/2376/4273 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/handle/2376/4273 Shelf Number: 128352 Keywords: Police Officer FatiguePolice PerformancePolice StressShift WorkWork Schedules |
Author: Amendola, Karen L. Title: The Shift Length Experiment: What We Know About 8-, 10-, and 12-Hour Shifts in Policing Summary: Ever since the earliest police forces were established, the schedules and hours that police officers work have been an issue of concern to officers and chiefs. Driving these concerns have been issues of safety, health, performance, quality of life, fatigue, and efficiency. Traditionally, police departments have relied on a five-day, eight-hour scheduling framework with three standard shifts (day, evening, midnight) in each twenty-four-hour period. However, since at least as early as the 1970s, law enforcement agencies have adopted alternate schedule configurations. Compressed workweek schedules (CWWs), in which the workweek is shortened and the length of the day is extended, have indeed been popularized in the last several decades in many industries, including policing. The traditional five-day, forty-hour workweek did not become the U.S. standard until approximately seventy years ago. Labor unions strongly opposed long work hours that were common in the late eighteenth century but often to no avail. By the turn of the century, however, a number of industries had begun to implement eight-hour workdays (Dankert, Mann, and Northrup 1965). Following the Great Depression and subsequent legislation associated with the New Deal (the WalshHealy Public Contracts Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938), more changes became possible such that private firms began to implement traditional five-day, forty-hour workweeks. Around that same time, a few corporations even began experimenting with a four ten-hour day schedule. By the 1970s, CWWs had gained in popularity, and the Federal Employees' Flexible and Compressed Work Schedules Act was enacted into law in 1978. During the 1970s and 1980s, tremendous attention was paid to CWWs. Almost thirty years ago, in a National Institute of Justice-funded study of work scheduling, researchers surveyed 160 agencies regarding their practices and reported that almost 25 percent of departments had implemented 9-, 10-, 11- and even 12-hour schedules for one or more shifts (Stenzel and Buren 1983). Because no national data have been reported since that time, the Police Foundation conducted surveys with a random sample of law enforcement agencies in 2005 and 2009. The results of our national surveys seem to suggest that there is a great variation in shift schedules employed in U.S. law enforcement, but there have been little available data on the advantages and disadvantages associated with these shifts. Over the years, there has been considerable research to examine the impacts of CWWs and long working hours across industries, particularly in 24/7 and high-risk operations (e.g., hospitals, production and power plants, utilities, and transportation). Yet, Axelsson (2005, 17) noted that while management and employees believe the advantages of longer work days outweigh the disadvantages, "it could, perhaps, also be argued that the drawbacks of extended work shifts are largely unknown or ignored by these groups." While research on CWWs in policing is quite limited, there has been considerable conjecture about the benefits and drawbacks of CWWs and long work hours among law enforcement personnel. Not surprisingly, law enforcement personnel frequently claim that CWWs offer far more advantages than disadvantages. Among the many benefits espoused are the ability to increase coverage during peak hours of activity, improve officer job satisfaction and morale, increase performance, reduce response time, reduce crime, reduce costs for officers and agencies (e.g., commuting, overtime, and sick leave), limit fatigue, improve teamwork, allow for increased in-service training during periods of overlap, increase days off for personal pursuits/family activities, and reduce accidents and complaints against officers (see, e.g., Brown 1974; Cunningham 1982; Durrett 1983; Fournet 1983; Jacques 2010; Strunk 1978; Sundermeier 2008; Vega and Gilbert 1997; Vila, Kenney, Morrison, and Reuland 2000). Many of these purported benefits, however, are far from firmly established in the research literature. Due to a belief that such schedules may improve efficiency, many law enforcement executives have considered or implemented CWWs (Oliver 2005; Sundermeier 2008; Vega and Gilbert 1997). Nevertheless, Cunningham (1990) noted some managers in Canadian law enforcement agencies were concerned about potential disadvantages associated with CWWs in terms of reduced opportunity for communication with staff, citizen complaints, potential costs, lack of investigative continuity, and lessened identification with the police profession due to time away from the job. In addition, Melekian (1999) noted potential drawbacks associated with CWWs, such as increased fatigue, reduced communication across shifts, lessened ability to deal with neighborhood problems, and, most importantly, disengagement from the job and reduced ability or time to establish and maintain relationships with the community, thereby detracting from community policing and job involvement. In the absence of empirical evidence, agencies as well as police unions/associations have occasionally conducted their own research, albeit often without the benefit of rigorous scientific methods. As such, when agencies make decisions about scheduling, they often do so without sufficient scientifically acquired knowledge. Researchers have routinely noted the many unknown potential impacts of CWWs (e.g., deCarufel and Schaan 1990), and scientists and practitioners have called for additional research on CWWs and optimal shift lengths in law enforcement (e.g., Melekian 1999; Vila 2006). Moreover, scientists have cautioned about the use of extended and long work hours in positions where public health and safety could be threatened (Armstrong-Stassen 1998; Knauth 2007; Macdonald and Bendak 2000; Rosa 1995; Scott and Kittaning 2001). Due to widespread knowledge of the impact of fatigue on safety, policies and requirements have been modified in many federally regulated industries. Indeed, according to Vila and colleagues, the well-known impact of fatigue on safety has led the federal government to regulate the work hours of private, for-profit workers - train engineers, truck drivers, commercial pilots, and nuclear power plant operators - but surprisingly not the police, "the government's most public, sensitive, and routinely controversial service provider" (Vila, Morrison, and Kenney 2002, 7). Yet, while law enforcement is fraught with considerable risks to officers and the public, examination of the impacts of CWWs in policing has been less frequent and often less rigorous than that conducted in other industries. Furthermore, much of the research across industries, including policing, has been limited by the research designs employed, the methodologies used, and/or measurement problems, often leading to contradictory or inconclusive findings. In an effort to comprehensively address the many potential effects of CWWs in policing in a systematic way, the Police Foundation conducted an experiment in which officers were randomly assigned to shifts (8-, 10-, and 12-hour). We examined the independent effects of shift length, taking into consideration the time of day worked and the variations associated with specific agencies. Because past studies have tended to focus on a limited number of potentially important managerial and individual considerations, we examined a broad array of outcomes important to the officers themselves and the organizations, including officer stress, sleep, fatigue, health, and quality of life, off-duty employment and overtime, and a variety of performance and safety measures. In this report, we begin by presenting the key findings of our experiment and then describe the methodology, the comprehensive array of measures employed, and the results of the analyses conducted in the experiment. Subsequently, we examine cross-industry research on compressed workweeks, including that from policing and its connection to our findings. Details: Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 2011. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 26, 2017 at: https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Shift-Length-Experiment-Practitioner-Guide.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Shift-Length-Experiment-Practitioner-Guide.pdf Shelf Number: 124323 Keywords: Occupational Safety and HealthPolice Officers, Shift Work (U.S.)Police StressShift Work |