For the fourth time this year, an air traffic controller has been caught sleeping on the job. To which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood responded in a statement, “This is absolutely unacceptable. The American public trusts us to run a safe system. Safety is our No. 1 priority and I am committed to working 24 /7 until these problems are corrected.”
But truth be told, working 24 /7 is what got us into this mess in the first place. How many of these potentially life-threatening errors will be sufficient for the FAA to recognize the cost of sleep deprivation? So far this year similar incidents have been reported at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport and Seattle-Tacoma’s International Airport. America has been taking sleep for granted far too long. Although sleep researchers, such as myself, and the media have been alerting us to the importance of sleep for a while, it appears the people in charge have been slow to make the changes to the way we work during the hours when we are most vulnerable to sleepiness.
Night shift workers have it hard. They are supposed to perform at their peak during times when most of the world is asleep. This proves to be exceedingly difficult, as we can see by the large numbers of accidents attributed to fatigue-related errors each year. Also, shift workers suffer from more health problems than their day shift counterparts, including increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and even cancer.
While it’s likely that many night shift workers are a self-selecting bunch with a biological tendency toward being night owls, this is not always the case, which makes staying alert all night excruciatingly difficult.
But even the naturally nocturnal have a difficult time reconciling their internal clocks with the dominant clocks out in the world, which include the sun, the noise of the 9-to-5ers, and social responsibilities such as a young son or daughter wanting breakfast.
It appears that the FAA had some sense of the dangers of leaving one sleepy person in charge of all inbound and outbound flights by their decision to put two controllers on duty during the midnight shift. Inexplicably, having only the single controller was recently reinstated after the FAA implemented “new procedures.”
So what are the solutions? Since we cannot stem the tide of our 24-hour culture, there are some important standards that should be adhered to by employers and employees:
Employers need to keep a uniform work schedule for each employee, and avoid jumping from working day and night shifts across weeks.
Employees need to make a decision about their schedule and stick to it. That means keeping a reliable schedule on and off work. They must avoid extended work hours, including overtime. Shift workers have a hard enough time staying awake through a single shift. Think of the consequences of longer periods at the helm. We should never work more than four night shifts in a row and have at least 48 hours of recovery between shifts.
Finally, nap before every night shift. Studies have shown that prophylactic napping helps people perform better and for longer duration than napping during work hours, or worst of all, at the end of a shift, when mistakes already have been made.
We all know the keys to health: Eat right, get some exercise and get some rest. Yet as a nation, we are overweight, out of shape and tired. We must include sleep health in our overall approach to well-being at home and in the workplace.
Sara Mednick is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.
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