Deciphering Fatigue Risk Management Systems: A Holistic Approach to Mitigating Work-Related Fatigue

Details

• Personal Author:
  Dawson D ; Sprajcer M ; Wong I
• Description:
  Approximately 40 million workers in the United States (nearly 30 percent of the workforce) are employed in nonstandard work schedules such as shiftwork and extended work hours. These types of schedules are common and often required in industries such as transport, healthcare, mining, oil and gas, utilities, public safety, and information technology. Fatigue can reduce attention and concentration, impair communication skills, and limit decision-making ability, increasing the risk for safety-critical incidents such as injuries and motor vehicle crashes. For example, studies have shown that the risk of fatigue and safety-critical incidents not only increases over the course of a night shift, but it also increases dramatically over successive night shifts. Therefore, organizations that use shiftwork schedules need to manage the risk associated with fatigue to keep their workers safe and productive. Limiting hours worked has been the traditional way of managing fatigue in some industries. This often means creating rules based on the number of consecutive shifts, break minima, shift length, or the maximum number of hours worked in a week or month. However, fatigue can stem from a number of sources such as extended time on task, heavy physical or mental workloads, monotony, exposure to hot or noisy environments, night work, and impaired sleep. For these reasons, managing fatigue in the workplace requires a holistic approach that recognizes its many sources and creates a framework to mitigate the risks. A fatigue risk management system (FRMS) is a set of management practices for identifying and controlling fatigue-related risks. The use of this approach has been widely adopted internationally in the last two decades. More recently, in the U.S., FRMSs have been effectively incorporated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration. To effectively manage work-related fatigue, we need to recognize not only the likelihood of fatigue, but also its related consequences. A unique aspect of an FRMS is that it recognizes that fatigue should be considered on a continuum, not a cut-point, and the risk for a safety-critical event relates the level of fatigue with the level of effort needed for the occupational task. Acknowledging that fatigue is impossible to eliminate entirely is a critical first step in identifying and controlling fatigue-related risk. This approach has been successfully adopted across a number of international jurisdictions and within key U.S. transport industries. Fatigue-proofing the workplace by reducing the likelihood or consequence of a fatigue-related error has clearly been shown as a method to reduce the risk associated with a fatigue-related error. This risk-based approach to fatigue management generally allows a greater degree of operational flexibility. It is usually more accepted by workers because it doesn't mean a complete stoppage of work and resulting loss in pay, as would happen with work hour limitations. This is not to say that work can or should continue indefinitely without breaks within the context of an FRMS, but rather that decisions about working time arrangements should be made based on an assessment of risk, not on arbitrary limitations to work hours. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Decision Making Fatigue Mental Health Nervous System Occupational Health Safety Shift Work Schedule Sleep Sleep Initiation And Maintenance Disorders
• Keywords:
  Cognitive Function Decision Making Long Work Hours Management Personnel Mental Health Shift Work Sleep Deprivation Worker Safety Work Intervals Work Schedules
• ISSN:
  1066-7660
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSI - Division of Science Integration
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  26-29
• Volume:
  33
• Issue:
  10
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20066233
• Citation:
  Synergist 2022 Oct; 33(10):26-29
• Email:
  kwn0@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2023
• NORA Priority Area:
  Transportation, Warehousing and Utilities
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  The Synergist
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:51fe8e6003ba39a9ea19205abccea53d7b5b1109d6ac3970e5048fabfd8585a86a36683a791e324f1d672773d84cc6191a4ed823b28d29d6139b32175fd4a8d0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/212718/cdc_212718_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 234.64 KB ]