A Combined Field and Laboratory Design for Assessing the Impact of Night Shift Work on Police Officer Operational Performance

• Published in: Sleep (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 35; no. 11; pp. 1575 - 1577
• Main Authors: Waggoner, Lauren B., Grant, Devon A., Van Dongen, Hans P. A., Belenky, Gregory, Vila, Bryan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC 01.11.2012
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Attention; Fatigue - physiopathology; Female; Humans; Male; Pilot Projects; Police; Psychomotor Performance; Short Note; Sleep Disorders, Circadian Rhythm - physiopathology; United States; Wakefulness; Work Schedule Tolerance; United States; high fidelity driving simulator; operational performance; police; psychomotor vigilance test (PVT); research design; motor vehicle crash risk; Night and shift work; performance impairment; subjective sleepiness
• ISSN: 0161-8105; 1550-9109; 1550-9109
• DOI: 10.5665/sleep.2214

This study assessed the utility of a combined field and laboratory research design for measuring the impact of consecutive night shift work on the sleepiness, vigilance, and driving performance of police patrol officers. For police patrol officers working their normal night shift duty cycles, simulated driving performance and psychomotor vigilance were measured in a laboratory on two separate occasions: in the morning after the last of five consecutive 10.7-h night shifts, and at the same time in the morning after three consecutive days off duty. Order of participation in conditions was randomized among subjects. Subjects experienced manipulation of sleep schedules due to working night shifts in a real operational environment, but performance testing was conducted under controlled laboratory conditions. N = 29 active-duty police patrol officers (27 male, 2 female; age 37.1 ± 6.3 years) working night shift schedules participated in this study. Simulated driving performance, psychomotor vigilance, and subjective sleepiness were significantly degraded following 5 consecutive night shifts as compared to 3 consecutive days off duty, indicating that active-duty police officers are susceptible to performance degradation as a consequence of working nights. This combined field and laboratory research design succeeded in bridging the gap between the realism of the operational environment and the control of laboratory performance testing, demonstrating that this is a useful approach for addressing the relationship between shift work induced fatigue and critical operational task performance.