Sound the alarm: Health and safety risks associated with alarm response for salaried and retained metropolitan firefighters

Paterson, Jessica L.; Aisbett, Brad; Ferguson, Sally A.

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2015.09.024

Cited by 50 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…When calls occur during sleep, sleep is inevitably disrupted and there is less opportunity for sleep. However, even without calls, the duty of being on-call from home could still disrupt sleep [17].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies investigating the effect of working on-call on site have shown that sleep is adversely affected prior to a call occurring [14, [47][48][49]. It has been purported that the poorer sleep is due to the stress or anticipation of a call [6,14,17,47,48]. We contend that a similar relationship exists between sleep and stress when operating on-call from home ( Figure 1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Studies have investigated the effect of working on-call on site in doctors [11][12][13], ships' engineers [14], railroad engineers [15], medical helicopter pilots [4], and salaried firefighters [16]. In the second form of on-call work, employees are able to leave their place of employment and are called if required [5,6,17]. For brevity, this form of on-call work will be termed 'on-call from home' in this review, although it should be noted that personnel may not be physically at home whilst on-call, and may in fact be at a site of other employment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For brevity, this form of on-call work will be termed 'on-call from home' in this review, although it should be noted that personnel may not be physically at home whilst on-call, and may in fact be at a site of other employment. This form of on-call work is particularly relevant to fire and emergency service workers [17] and maintenance utility workers [18,19], as well as some doctors [20-23], nurses [24] and midwives [5]. This second form of on-call work is the focus of this review.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One inherent difference between on-call work and other forms of shift work is the unpredictability of when a call may occur. This unpredictability poses a unique work environment that is not faced by those working set shifts and has been identified as a factor that may inhibit workers' ability to "switch off" and attain a cognitive distance from work when on-call from home [6,17]. This has the potential to affect the lives of oncall workers by adversely impacting on their family time, social life, stress levels [5, 17,25,26], and consequently, further disrupting their sleep.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effect of working on-call on stress physiology and sleep: A systematic review

Hall

Ferguson

Turner

et al. 2017

Sleep Medicine Reviews

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SUMMARYOn-call work is becoming an increasingly common work pattern, yet the human impacts of this type of work are not well established. Given the likelihood of calls to occur outside regular work hours, it is important to consider the potential impact of working on-call on stress physiology and sleep. The aims of this review were to collate and evaluate evidence on the effects of working on-call from home on stress physiology and sleep. A systematic search of Ebsco Host, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus and ScienceDirect was conducted. Search terms included: on-call, on call, standby, sleep, cortisol, heart rate, adrenaline, noradrenaline, nor-adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine, nor-epinephrine, salivary alpha amylase and alpha amylase. Eight studies met the inclusion criteria, with only one study investigating the effect of working on-call from home on stress physiology. All eight studies investigated the effect of working on-call from home on sleep. Working on-call from home appears to adversely affect sleep quantity, and in most cases, sleep quality. However, studies did not differentiate between night's on-call from home with and without calls. Data examining the effect of working on-call from home on stress physiology were not sufficient to draw meaningful conclusions. KEYWORDSOn-call; standby; sleep quality; sleep quantity; hypothalamo-pituitary adrenal axis; cortisol; sympatho-adrenal medullary system; sleep. ABBREVIATIONSEPHPP: Effective public health practice project PRISMA: Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses SD: Standard deviation

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effect of working on-call on stress physiology and sleep: A systematic review

Hall

Ferguson

Turner

et al. 2017

Sleep Medicine Reviews

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Working hours, sleep, and fatigue in the public safety sector: A scoping review of the research

Allison

Tiesman

Wong

et al. 2022

American J Industrial Med

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Background The public safety sector includes law enforcement officers (LEO), corrections officers (CO), firefighter service (FF), wildland firefighting (WFF), and emergency medical services (EMS), as defined in the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Across these occupations, shiftwork, long‐duration shifts, and excessive overtime are common. Our objective was to identify research gaps related to working hours, sleep, and fatigue among these workers. Methods We used a scoping review study design that included searches of MEDLINE, Embase, CAB Abstracts, Global Health, PsychInfo, CINAHL, Scopus, Academic Search Complete, Agricultural and Environmental Science Collection, ProQuest Central, Cochrane Library, Safety Lit, Homeland Security Digital Library, and Sociological Abstracts using a range of occupational search terms and terms related to working hours, sleep, and fatigue. Results Out of 3415 articles returned from our database search, 202 met all inclusion criteria. Six common outcomes related to working hours, sleep, and fatigue emerged: sleep, fatigue, work performance, injury, psychosocial stress, and chronic disease. Nearly two‐thirds (59%, n = 120) of the studies were observational, of which 64% (n = 77) were cross sectional and 9% were (n = 11) longitudinal; 14% (n = 30) of the studies were reviews; and 19% (n = 39) were experimental or quasi‐experimental studies. Only 25 of the 202 articles described mitigation strategies or interventions. FFs, LEOs, EMS, and WFFs were the most studied, followed by COs. Conclusions In general, more longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to enrich the knowledge base on the consequences of long working hours, poor sleep, and fatigue in the public safety sector. Few experimental studies have tested novel approaches to fatigue mitigation in diverse sectors of public safety. This gap in research limits the decisions that may be made by employers to address fatigue as a threat to public‐safety worker health and safety.

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The impact of anticipating a stressful task on sleep inertia when on-call

et al. 2020

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Sound the alarm: Health and safety risks associated with alarm response for salaried and retained metropolitan firefighters

Cited by 50 publications

References 28 publications

The effect of working on-call on stress physiology and sleep: A systematic review

The effect of working on-call on stress physiology and sleep: A systematic review

Working hours, sleep, and fatigue in the public safety sector: A scoping review of the research

The impact of anticipating a stressful task on sleep inertia when on-call

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