Fire Fighter Fatigue Management Program: Operation Healthy Sleep

Mass General Brigham

Status: Completed

Conditions: Injuries; Restless Leg Syndrome; Shift-Work Sleep Disorder; Insomnia; Impaired Driving; Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Treatments: Other: Sleep disorders education and screening

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT01988129

2009-P-000697

Details and patient eligibility

About

Firefighters work some of the most demanding schedules known under highly stressful and demanding conditions. The need to work frequent extended shifts and long work weeks leads to acute and chronic partial sleep deprivation as well as misalignment of circadian phase. Sleep disorders are common, costly, and treatable, but often remain undiagnosed and untreated and it is likely that a significant proportion of firefighters suffer from undiagnosed sleep disorders which will further impair their sleep and exacerbate fatigue.In the current proposal, we aim to address the health, performance and safety issues related to fatigue in firefighters and test the effectiveness of a Comprehensive Firefighter Fatigue Management Program (CFFMP) that we have termed 'Operation Healthy Sleep.'

Full description

We propose to use a station-level, randomized experimental design to test the hypotheses that implementation of a Comprehensive Firefighter Fatigue Management Program will:

1. improve the mean total sleep, alertness and cognitive performance of firefighters;

2. improve firefighter safety, as determined by:

   1. decreased rates of motor vehicle crashes;
   2. decreased on-the-job injuries;

3. improve firefighter performance, as determined by decreased response time;

4. improve firefighters' health, as determined by:

   1. diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders
   2. improved general health indices
   3. decreased number of 'sick' days

5. improve firefighters' and families' job satisfaction and ability to cope with extended work hours.

Enrollment: 1,189 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• This proposal includes research involving human subjects (fire department employees).
• Active firefighters working in the study fire department will be eligible to participate in the study.
• All applicants will be considered without bias, regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin.

Exclusion criteria

• Non fire department employees

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,189 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Workplace-based fatigue risk management program consisting of sleep health education and sleep disorders screening. The 32 fire department stations were paired according to the previous calendar years' workload. One station from each pair was randomly assigned to receive the intervention program. Sleep education sessions were scheduled according to station. On the education day(s) assigned to that stations, all personnel present that day were instructed to attend, and 542/601 did so.

Treatment:

Other: Sleep disorders education and screening

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Current practice. Firefighters in the Control Stations continued their normal role and were not invited to attend the sleep education and sleep disorders screening program. There was no formal contact with the control group. As part of normal operational requirements, a small number of firefighters are reassigned to other stations each day and therefore 18/588 firefighters from control stations happened to be reassigned to an intervention station on the day of the education session and attended the session.