EMS Sleep Health Study and Webtool for Scheduling

The U.S. emergency medical services (EMS) system is comprised of more than 20,000 EMS agencies and approximately 1 million EMS clinicians. These agencies and clinicians respond to emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Those who work in EMS provide time-sensitive medical care for the acutely ill and injured, stabilize patients, and quickly transport and transfer patients to hospital emergency departments. Given that EMS care is provided around the clock, EMS clinicians are deployed in shifts, including long duration shifts and back-to-back shifts. Large numbers of EMS personnel report poor sleep quality and mental and physical fatigue. The working conditions for many EMS personnel, including shift work, inhibit them from obtaining adequate sleep. Interference with one or more of these components of sleep can lead to mental and physical fatigue. Fatigue among EMS clinicians is associated with increased odds of injury, patient-related medical errors, and adverse events, and workplace injury. This project focuses on the mitigation of fatigue for EMS systems, which enhances post-crash care by better ensuring that EMS professionals safely arrive on the scenes of crashes and provide medical care that results in fewer treatment errors. This project has practical implications as, according to NHTSA’s Office of EMS, 12,000 EMS agencies responded to 1,436,763 motor vehicle crashes in 2021. In addition, mitigating fatigue is particularly important for emergency vehicle drivers because fatigue associated with long shift hours negatively affects driving performance.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References;
  • Pagination: 3p
  • Serial:
  • Publication flags:

    Open Access (libre)

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01871942
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: DOT HS 813 389
  • Files: HSL, NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
  • Created Date: Jan 27 2023 10:55AM