Intoxicated by fatigue

Canadian corporations are facing a dangerous liability that they are not properly accounting for: workplace fatigue. Between one-quarter and one-third of Canadians report regularly having difficulty with sleep and wakefulness.

These difficulties lead to functional impairment comparable to alcohol intoxication. And while it is not acceptable to report for duty while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, how many workplaces have similar policies in place to deal with the larger number of workers who are regularly functionally impaired by sleepiness?

How many employers help their workers avoid the sleepiness caused by long hours on the job and the resulting inadequacy of workers’ sleep or the rigours of shift work in round-the-clock operations? How many have a meaningful “fatigue management program” in place?

Fatigue has been implicated in major industrial accidents and may be a factor in up to 90 per cent of industrial accidents, driving up health-care and WCB costs and lowering productivity rates.

Poor sleep quality can be linked to a variety of common problems, such as pain, stress, anxiety, depression and the need for medication, and encourage the use of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, to name but a few. The average healthy adult needs about eight and a half hours a night of good sleep. But either due to social choices or the obligations of the workplace, people skimp on this basic human commodity.

Working shifts compounds all of these problems. When trying to sleep during the day, people may get two to four hours less sleep. People generally find it harder to sleep during the day, and what sleep they get is generally lighter, more fragmented and less refreshing and restorative.

There are also specific and critically important sleep disorders that affect a great many individuals. In fact, more than 90 such conditions have been described in medical literature. One of the most common and dangerous is sleep apnea.

Never heard of sleep apnea? It is more common in adults than asthma, affecting up to a quarter of adult men and almost a tenth of women. Untreated, the sleepiness associated with this snoring- and breathing-related sleep disorder increases the risk of a motor-vehicle crash up to seven-fold. No doubt, it has a comparable effect on workplace performance.

Are there programs in your workplace to screen for and identify sleep problems of various types, to prevent trouble from arising in the first place and provide necessary solutions when problems do arise?

With proper education of both management and labour, proper training and sometimes only minor modifications to work systems and schedules, it is possible to significantly enhance safety and productivity, performance and profitability.

The cost of maintaining the status quo greatly exceeds the cost of fixing the problem and securing a distinct competitive advantage and a healthier and safer environment. It is sheer folly to continue to do otherwise.

Jeffrey J. Lipsitz is founder and medical director of the Sleep Disorders Centre of Metropolitan Toronto and similar specialized medical facilities across Ontario. For more information contact (416) 785-1128, ext. 301 or [email protected].

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