An Exploration of Shift Work, Fatigue, and Gender Among Police Officers: The BCOPS Study

Abstract

The present study examined the association between shift work and fatigue among male ( n = 230) and female ( n = 78) police officers. A 15-year work history database was used to define dominant shifts as day, afternoon, or night. A 10-item questionnaire created from the Standard Shiftwork Index (SSI) assessed fatigue. Gender-stratified analyses of variance and covariance and Poisson regression were used to compare means and prevalence of individual items across shifts. No significant differences in total fatigue scores were observed across shifts. However, the prevalence of the fatigue item "feelings of tiredness" was 89% higher among male officers working the afternoon shift compared with officers working the day shift (prevalence ratio [PR] = 1.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.12, 3.23], p = .020), after adjustment for covariates. Women reported a lower prevalence of tiredness than men on the afternoon shift. Organizations with afternoon shift workers should consider reducing fatigue at work through education and other methods.

Burnout and Stress Measurement in Police Officers: Literature Review and a Study With the Operational Police Stress Questionnaire

“…It will also be necessary to analyze the organizational stressors, which form the second part of the Police Stress Questionnaire. Moreover, the impact of individual and professional characteristics on stress and burnout must be considered, since the literature frequently suggests that different genders deal differently with emotions and stressors, with women feeling more emotional exhaustion, whereas men feel more disengagement, depersonalization, or indolence, and react differently to shift work (Violanti et al, 2018). Additionally, other psychological variables such as coping and resilience must be included, since they can affect stress responses and the process of stress and burnout development (Allison et al, 2019).…”

Burnout Among Private Security Staff in Serbia: A Multicentic Cross-Sectional Study

“…Due to professional stress and the arising burnout, the employees are at risk of clinical manifestations of depression, professional impairment, leaving work, alcohol and drugs abuse, suicide, and increased aggression toward others ( 7 , 8 ). Burnout has serious professional and personal consequences, including lack of professionalism (often sick-leaves, reduced efficiency at work, lack of interest, non-collegiality) ( 19 ), and problems in communication with close persons, divorces, losing friends, alienation, aggressiveness privately ( 20 , 21 ).…”

Fatigue and its associated risk factors among shift workers: A systematic review

“…SSI used a scale that computes the score in a mean range from 10 to 50. The range of the mean of the studies in this review is between 16.3 and 43.6, where the lowest score was recorded by day shift nurses in Verma et al (2017) and the highest score was recorded by women police officers in a study by Violanti et al (2018). OFER gives a prevalence of two fatigue categories: chronic fatigue and acute fatigue.…”

“…A standard definition of fatigue was lacking and varied in the included studies, as only seven studies provided its definition by referring to the definition in other studies. Patterson et al (2015) used a definition by Ream and Richardson (1996), Mehta et al (2017) stated the definition used by Mason et al (2015), Violanti et al (2018) defined it using the definition used by Frone and Tidwell (2015) and Moore‐Ede et al (2010), Pelders and Nelson (2019) and Rasoulzadeh et al (2015) stated the definition used by Williamson et al (2011), Sorengaard et al (2019) defined it using the definition used by Huibers et al (2003), and Lu et al (2017) used the definition by van der Linden et al (2003). The usage of fatigue terms in the studies was also varied as every study used different terms of fatigue based on the type of measurements used in their studies.…”

“…People at this age are also mostly married and have more family responsibilities than older workers. Female workers are also at risk of getting fatigued as they usually juggle between work responsibilities and external responsibilities such as family care (Violanti et al, 2018). Sleep disorders like obstructive sleep apnea that are mainly caused by obesity also disrupt sleep as the disease will cause snoring, choking, and pause breathing during sleep (Wiegand et al, 2009).…”