Fatigue and alertness in the United States railroad industry part I: the nature of the problem

The railroad industry must actively manage employee fatigue and alertness problems to maintain an optimal level of operational safety and productivity. Given the necessity to operate nights and irregular hours, weekends and holidays under a wide range of physical conditions and service demands, we must explore every reasonable avenue to ensure employees are fit, alert, and well-rested. Effective fatigue management programs must address train crews, dispatchers, signalmen, track workers, and others – both operating and non-operating personnel. Work scheduling is a particular problem in on-call operations because of start-time variability, “call” predictability, and the common use of “shorter-than 24-h work/rest schedules”. Extensive night operations are incompatible with normal circadian rhythms. Staffing limitations often require extensive overtime and reduce the effectiveness of any work schedule. These and other institutional factors significantly contribute to employee sleep deficit and overall fatigue. Lack of alertness and reduced vigilance are related not only to sleep disruption and resulting sleep deficits, but also to cognitive workload, workload transition, the physical working environment, and the design of advanced control systems. Ongoing research into fatigue mitigation and alertness enhancement strategies and into advanced technologies such as Positive Train Control (PTC) can lead to improvements. These include better labor–management agreements, more effective fatigue-related educational programs, improved schedule regularity, and more practical and adaptable federal laws and regulations.     

The role of working hours,work environment and physical leisure activity on the need for recovery following a day's work among UK white-water raft guides: A within-subjects multilevel approach

BackgroundWhite-water raft guides are a growing workforce of the outdoor sector but little is known about how the working environment, workload and physical leisure activity impacts on the need for occupational recovery (the desire to replenish internal resources and recuperate in the time immediately following work) of those working in this physically demanding occupation.MethodsLongitudinal data were collected across an eight month working season at three month intervals. Multilevel analyses tested the within-subject associations between work environment, hours worked and physical leisure activity had on the need for recovery.ResultsWorking longer across the working season and participating in more physical leisure activity were directly associated with a lower need for occupational recovery. Furthermore, working on natural rivers significantly reduced the need for recovery experienced compared to work on man-made courses. This was regardless of the number of hours of worked in these environments.DiscussionPhysical leisure activity may provide a distraction from work, allowing employees to replenish their physical and psychological energy, thus protecting themselves against work-related fatigue. The findings also expand upon the previous literature identifying that working in a natural environment reduces the risk of experiencing work-related fatigue.     

Staying vigorous until work is over: The role of trait vigour,day‐specific work experiences and recovery

Staying vigorous throughout the day is important for work‐related behaviour, subjective well‐being, and for effective functioning in the family domain. This study examined trait vigour (i.e. a person's general level of vigour), day‐specific workload (time pressure, work hours), and recovery resulting from unwinding during leisure time as predictors of day‐specific vigour as experienced at the end of the working day. Seventy‐five individuals from service and public administration organizations completed one general survey and daily surveys two times per day for five working days. Trait vigour, demographic variables and control variables (e.g. job control, home workload) were assessed in the general survey. Day‐specific level of vigour, day‐specific workload, and day‐specific recovery were measured in the daily survey. Analyses following a hierarchical linear modelling approach showed that trait vigour, day‐specific workload and recovery accumulated during the preceding evenings predicted an individual's level of vigour at the end of the working day, after controlling for a range of other variables (gender, age, job control, and home workload). Trait vigour and accumulated recovery experiences interacted significantly to predict vigour at the end of the working day, indicating that individuals high on trait vigour benefit most from recovery experienced over the course of several days.     

Inability to Withdraw from Work as Related to Poor Next‐Day Recovery and Fatigue among Women

Recovery from work stress is crucial in avoiding stress‐related ill‐health. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate whether processes that prolong the mental exposure to work stressors, such as inability to withdraw from work (IW), the core construct in overcommitment, predicts fatigue and poor next‐day recovery 6 months later over what is predicted by job control and job demands. Self‐ratings in questionnaires were completed by 160 women working in dental care at two time points, 6 months apart. Job demands, job control, and IW were used to predict fatigue and poor next‐day recovery, respectively. Multiple regression analyses show that having children living at home, high job demands, and high IW were associated with fatigue 6 months later. Job demands and IW, but not having children at home, predicted poor next‐day recovery. Mediation analyses using a bootstrapping procedure indicated that IW partly mediated the relationship between job demands and fatigue and between job demands and next‐day recovery. These findings highlight the importance of considering IW in relation to fatigue and recovery from work and that such factors should be included in interventions targeting work‐related stress.     

Aviator performance in week-long extended flight operations in a helicopter simulator

Psychological, physiological, and biochemical correlates of aviator crew performance, stress, and fatigue were measured in a week-long flight schedule in a helicopter simulator. Three two-man crews of rotary wing aviators performed 14 h of precision instrument flight on each of 4 successive days and 10 h on the 5th day. Missions involved repetitions of 2-h standardized day and night flight profiles that were occasionally interrupted by simulated emergencies. Aviator performance measures included meeting assigned airspeeds, altitudes, headings, turn rates, and navigation requirements. Pilots slept 4 h each night. Baseline data were collected prior to, and recovery data after, the extended flight schedule. Pilots maintained simulator flight parameters to within acceptable tolerances of assigned headings, airspeeds, and altitudes, even into the morning of the 4th day of the schedule. However, cognitive and judgmental errors were made. Even though flight surgeons deemed them unsafe to fly by the 3rd night, pilots continued to fly well to the 5th day.     

Protecting Job Performance and Well-Being in the Demanding Work Context: The Moderating Effect of Psychological Detachment for Chinese Employees

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to examine the lasting effects of working hours on later job performance and well-being (i.e. emotional exhaustion and work engagement); second, to delineate the protective role of psychological detachment in the highly demanding Chinese work setting featuring long working hours. We employed a panel design in which all variables were measured twice, with six months in between the waves. Data were obtained from 323 Chinese employees working in diverse industries in Taiwan. Analysing the panel data with structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques, we found that working hours were positively associated with emotional exhaustion and negatively associated with work engagement and job performance, measured six months later. Detachment moderated the effects of working hours on later work engagement and job performance. Specifically, detachment attenuated the negative relationships between working hours and work engagement and job performance. The present study extends the recovery research in the West by demonstrating the protective role of detachment in the East Asian societies with important managerial implications.     

When Mothers’ Work Matters for Youths’ Daily Time Use: Implications of Evening and Weekend Shifts

Drawing upon the work-home resources model, this study examined the implications of mothers’ evening and weekend shifts for youths’ time with mother, alone, and hanging out with peers unsupervised, with attention to both the amount and day-to-day consistency of time use. Data came from 173 mothers who worked in the long-term care industry and their youths who provided daily diaries. Multilevel modeling revealed that youths whose mothers worked more evening shifts on average spent less time with their mothers compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer evening shifts. Youths whose mothers worked more weekend shifts, however, spent more time with their mothers and exhibited less consistency in their time in all three activity domains compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer weekend shifts. Girls, not boys, spent less time alone on days when mothers worked weekend shifts than on days with standard shifts. Older but not younger adolescents spent more time hanging out with friends on evening and weekend shift days, and their unsupervised peer time was less consistent across days when mothers worked more evening shifts. These effects adjusted for sociodemographic and day characteristics, including school day, number of children in the household, mothers’ marital status and work hours, and time with fathers. Our results illuminate the importance of the timing and day of mothers’ work for youths’ daily activities. Future interventions should consider how to increase mothers’ resources to deal with constraints on parenting due to their work during nonstandard hours, with attention to child gender and age.     

Neonatal tactile stimulation enhances spatial working memory, prefrontal long-term potentiation, and D1 receptor activation in adult rats

Environmental stimuli during neonatal periods play an important role in the development of cognitive function. In this study, we examined the long-term effects of neonatal tactile stimulation (TS) on spatial working memory (SWM) and related mechanisms. We also investigated whether TS-induced effects could be counteracted by repeated short periods of maternal separation (MS). Wistar rat pups submitted to TS were handled and marked transiently per day during postnatal days 2–9 or 10–17. TS/MS pups were stimulated in the same way as TS pups and then individually separated from their mother for 1 h/day. Their nontactile stimulated (NTS) siblings served as controls. In adulthood, TS and TS/MS rats showed better performance in two versions of the delayed alternation task and superior in vivo long-term potentiation of the hippocampo–prefrontal cortical pathway when compared with controls. Furthermore, there were more doses of A77636 (a selective dopamine D1 agonist) to significantly improve SWM performance in TS and TS/MS rats than in NTS rats, suggesting that activation of prefrontal D1 receptors in TS and TS/MS rats is more optimal for SWM function than in NTS rats. MS did not counteract TS-induced effects because no significant difference was found between TS/MS and TS animals. These data indicate that in early life, external tactile stimulation leads to long-term facilitative effects in SWM-related neural function.     

Long Working Hours and Well-being: What We Know,What We Do Not Know,and What We Need to Know

Despite a widespread belief in both the academic and public policy literatures that working long hours is deleterious to health and well-being, our critical review of this large and complex literature fails to support a robust direct causal effect of work hours on either physical or mental well-being outcomes. Large-scale epidemiological studies, many of which are prospective and include objective health outcome measures, support a statistically significant association between long work hours and coronary heart disease and depression, but the effect sizes are very small. Moreover, there is an absence of true longitudinal studies that assess the consistency of working long hours over time and its relationship to well-being. Our review suggests that the effects of working long hours are nuanced in that they may vary considerably for different working populations based on gender, age, working conditions, and other factors. Primary and meta-analytic studies suggest that such moderator effects are plausible, yet rigorous testing of these remains to be done. We conclude with suggestions for specific moderator effects that seem worth investigating in future research.     

A goal programming model for crew duties generation

An Erratum has been published for this article in Journal of Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis 10(5) 2001, 285. This paper proposes a model for the generation of daily work duties of airside crew (being bus drivers) at the Hong Kong International Airport. The results can be adopted as a good crew schedule, in the sense that it is both feasible, satisfying requirements of various work conditions, and ‘optimal’ in minimizing overtime shifts. It is formulated as a goal programme, specifically designed to cater for the manpower planning issues to handle frequent changes of flight schedules by flexibility in work patterns of driver duties. Illustrative results from an actual case study are given. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The self-reported causes of sleepiness in shift-working tram and truck drivers

Identifying the causes of sleepiness in various safety-critical work environments is necessary for implementing more efficient fatigue management strategies. In transportation, little is known about drivers’ own perceptions of these causes. Therefore, we instructed shift-working tram (n = 23) and long-haul truck drivers (n = 52) to report at the end of their shifts what made them sleepy if they felt so. These self-reports, measured on-duty sleepiness, and sleep amounts were recorded on every shift over a period of 2–3 weeks per driver. The causes of sleepiness were queried with smartphone applications and sleep logs. Sleepiness was measured with the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and sleep with wrist-worn actigraphs. Data were analyzed using generalized estimating equations. Sleep loss and insufficient rest breaks were commonly reported as causing sleepiness among the tram drivers, whereas time of day and sleep loss were the leading causes among the truck drivers. Other causes, such as traffic or cabin conditions, were not frequently mentioned. During morning, day, and evening shifts, the truck drivers were less likely to report insufficient rest breaks as causing sleepiness than the tram drivers. Similarly, during morning shifts, the truck drivers were less likely to attribute their sleepiness to sleep loss. In shifts with drives reporting severe sleepiness (KSS ≥ 7 at least once, 18–21% of shifts), sleep loss was significantly reported as causing sleepiness among both groups. Reporting insufficient rest breaks was associated with severe sleepiness among the tram drivers, whereas time of day showed the same among the truck drivers. The results highlight the need for addressing sleep-related fatigue in transportation and provide directions for future research with regard to secondary causes of sleepiness.     

Understanding time use,stress and recovery practices among early career physicians: an exploratory study

Early career physicians (ECPs) work an average of 80 h per week, and at times may approach 24 continuous hours working. These hours, combined with a stressful work environment, and an inability to physically and psychologically detach from work make ECPs likely to experience burnout and other negative health-related consequences. This study provides insight into the stress and recovery challenges faced by ECPs in a typical hospital environment. Rich qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from participants regarding daily time usage, and recovery practices and needs. ECPs report longer working hours, less leisure time and shorter amounts of sleep than average working adults. ECPs do not participate in many resource-replenishing activities while at work, and when out of work, they tend to participate in more passive than active forms of recovery. Resource-draining activities were identified as requiring much of ECP’s nonwork time, further limiting recovery. The prevention of burnout and other negative health consequences among ECPs requires the building of a workplace and educational culture that supports regular resource replenishment. This includes the need for a curriculum of medical education that teaches ECPs to identify the signs of stress and recovery needs, and how to effectively address these needs.     

Do Father-Friendly Policies Promote Father-Friendly Child-Rearing Practices? A Review of Swedish Parental Leave and Child Health Centers

By reviewing the literature, we looked at how parental leave policies in Sweden have influenced two well-defined areas of early father involvement: participating in parental leave and at visits/activities at the Child Health Centers. Sweden has one of the most comprehensive and egalitarian parental leave policies in the world, permitting parents to take 480 days off of work, receive 80% of their pay for the first 15 months, and divide their leave however they see fit, barring that both parents receive 2 months of parental leave that is exclusive to them. Additionally, fathers are permitted to take the first ten working days off to be at home with his family. Most parents, especially mothers, use parental leave throughout their infant’s first year. During the parents’ time off from work, nearly all Swedish parents (95–99%) utilize the Child Health Centers between 11 and 13 times during the infant’s first year of life. The Child Health Centers help to monitor a child’s growth and development, provide parenting support, immunizations, health education, health screenings, and provide referral sources if the child has any special needs. However, fathers only use 22% of all parental leave days. Studies have pointed out that fathers may not use parental leave because of corporate, maternal, and financial attitudes. Despite the Child Health Centers’ policy of including both parents, fathers do not utilize the Child Health Centers to the same extent as mothers. Research has shown that fathers may not use Child Health Centers as they are mainly only open during normal working hours, they are dominated by females (staff and mothers), and many conversations during the child’s first year are directed towards mothers. Barriers for why father involvement is lower than mothers are discussed.     

A preliminary study on the relationship between characteristics of TV content and delayed speech development in young children

Our previous population survey of 18-month-old children suggested an association between delayed language development and heavy TV viewing. We therefore collected all 85 videos described as children's favorites in that questionnaire to examine relationships between the characteristics of habitually viewed videos and language development. In the language delayed group, compared to the non-delayed group, the types of videos preferred more were “realistic animations” and “baby education” and the characteristics of videos were contained few close-ups of characters facing viewers, continued uninterruptedly between stories, had constant movement or transformation of characters, had a high frame rate of animation, and that adults readily kept on watching the videos even with the sound off. These characteristics were seen more in videos the above two types. These findings imply that habitual television/video viewing with characteristics that are not apt to elicit parent–child communication for long hours may affect delayed language development in young children.     

Opportunities For Learning: Course Sequences and Positional Advantages

Course sequences are strands of courses in particular content areas that span a student's educational career. Courses that are differentiated and sequentially organized, such as mathematics and science course sequences, create opportunities for positional advantages in a school's curricular structure. When students make a nonroutine change of schools – that is, transferring to a school outside of the regular attendance zone – they are at risk of changing their positional advantage. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988–94 (NELS:88–94), we examine the educational outcomes of sequences and explore curricular dislocations within the context of school choice. We find that the strongest predictors of 12th-grade mathematics and science course sequences are a student's course sequences at 10th grade. With regard to outcomes, students in higher mathematics and science sequences show greater achievement gains. Furthermore, students in higher mathematics sequences are less likely to have behavior problems and are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. Students who make a nonroutine change of schools are more likely to be in lower course sequences than students who do not transfer. Thus, course sequences in mathematics and science are tangible experiences with real consequences for students' lives during and beyond high school and are sensitive to transitions which disrupt the continuity of students' high school careers.     

Extended workdays: Effects on performance and ratings of fatigue and alertness

The present investigation provided a laboratory test of long workdays and served as an initial step in developing a field-test battery that is sensitive to fatigue. Six subjects worked both a 12-h/4-day workweek and an 8-h/6-day week at a data-entry job simulation. Before and after the first and last days of each week, they completed a battery of brief tests measuring cognitive, perceptual-motor, task-sharing, motor, and sensory capacities, as well as subjective feelings. Results suggest that the 12-h/4-day week was more fatiguing than the 8 h/6-day week. In the data-entry job, it was easier to improve performance across the 8 h/6-day week. This result suggested that the fatigue of the 12-h days slowed the rate of improvement across the week. With respect to the test battery, two cognitive tasks (grammatical reasoning and digit addition) and several self-report scales also reflected greater fatigue in the 12-h/4day week. Performance efficiency decreased and reports of drowsiness and lack of concentration increased from the beginning to the end of the final 12-h workday. On the basis of these results, it was concluded that the test battery has utility for the assessment of the potential fatigue effects of long workdays in actual work settings.     

Delayed recovery of working memory following day‐case surgery

Post‐operative recovery of cognitive function is an important outcome measure following surgical anaesthesia. This study examined the influence of task complexity in 12 patients undergoing elective day‐case surgery using reaction time tasks that differed in their stimulus‐response mapping rules (compatible, incompatible, working memory). Tasks were administered at baseline, and at 1, 4 and 24 hours post‐surgery. Compared to a reference group of 18 non‐anaesthetised volunteers, the patient group showed considerable slowing one hour post‐operatively. This slowing remained at the time of discharge (4‐hours), was absent the next day, and did not vary as a function of task complexity. Only attentional lapses in the working memory task were sensitive to the recovery process and residual impairment remained the next day. The findings indicate that tasks requiring efficient access to working memory are impaired for longer than tasks simply requiring access to information passively retained in short‐term memory. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Present mood states in Brazilian night nurses

Variations in the state of momentary emotions of Brazilian hospital nurses on day and night shifts were recorded. Ten graduate nurses working on day and night shifts in the clinical ward of hospitals completed the Present Mood States List of Engelmann at the beginning and end of the first and last days of each shift. Analysis indicated (a) nurses had a stable emotional profile, present at the working shift, and (b) variations in present mood states related to specific effects of shift work were observed when comparisons were made between the present mood states at the beginning and end of each shift duty.     

THE 12-HOUR WORK DAY: DIFFERING EMPLOYEE REACTIONS

This field study examined the reactions of non-exempt employees (N=671) to utilizing a "compressed word schedule" (i.e., 12-hour shifts) for staffing a continuous process plant which operated 24-hours per day/seven days per week. The 12-hour shifts were fixed with shifts changing at noon and at midnight. Based upon previous research, it was hypothesized that employees who had actually worked the 12-hour schedule would be more positive towards it than would employees who had never worked it. This was found to be the case. For example, those who had worked the 12-hour schedule saw the compressed schedule as being less fatiguing, saving on commuting cost and time, providing a more regular sleep pattern, and providing more usable time off. A second hypothesis concerned only those working the 12-hour shift. It was hypothesized that those employees working the 12 PM to 12 AM shift would be "less out of phase" with physiological and social rhythms and, thus, react more positively to the 12-hour shift than employees working the 12 AM to 12 PM shift. This hypothesis was strongly supported.