RE: 24hour shifts

["Paul M. Wright, Jr." <pmwright@home.com>]

> >Does working a 24 and being tired
> >and prone to
> >personality conflicts as well as potential patient mismanagement
> >differ any
> >from the crew member who is working 12's  but has a long night
> >before a 12
> >hour day shift...be it out in social activities, or the new baby
> >kept them up
> >all night...or they worked at the Fire Station the night before etc etc.


Excellent point, Josh, and the answer is probably that fatigue is fatigue.
But the legal implications are different, I think, between a situation where
an employer embraces a 24 hour staffing pattern as opposed to a situation
where individual employees fail to protect their own individual fitness to
fly by overbooking their jobs or personal lives.  One might think that
employees with a 24-hour shift ahead of them would be more careful to show
up well-rested but my experience suggests the opposite often occurs
(particularly in low-volume programs where there is a reasonable expectation
they will be able to catch up on their sleep during their duty shift).

I, too, would like to see well-designed air-medical specific studies that
would either refute or support my anecdotal experience over the past 25
years.  Even if the data was not sufficiently compelling to discourage the
24-hour staffing pattern, it could be potentially useful in measuring and
mitigating the identified risks.



paul


Paul M. Wright, Jr.
Mesa, AZ












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