The Dangers of Not Getting Enough Sleep
"What do the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, the disastrous oil spill by the Exxon Valdex, and the loss of the space shuttle "Challenger" all have in common?They were all caused by people who were making mistakes because they had too little sleep.
"This is how Stanley Coren's book "Sleep Thieves" opens.
He then goes on to point out that there is an epidemic of sleep deprivation in our society (which should be no surprise to anyone).
What is amazing is the cost of this sleep deprivation to us, not only individually but to our entire society.
Most of us have probably experienced at least one time where we drove somewhere even though we felt sleepy.
We don't realize what this means.
A German experiment found that one man who was sent out for a drive for just under 4 hours one night was actually asleep for about 20 minutes.
Evidently there was a something like a built-in autopilot that gave him just enough navigation information to prevent him from running off the road or hitting another vehicle.
According to Coren, if we are already sleepy and it is a time of day when sleepiness is strongest anyway, and we are driving, the urge to sleep at least for a few moments at a time becomes irresistible.
Even if we are only going at 30 mph, a 10 second period of sleep will result in you traveling 440 feet, which is enough to take you across several lanes of traffic and off the road for a distance longer than a football field's length.
That's scary.
This problem is especially significant for those truck drivers who have to drive long distances at night, without enough sleep, and often have got into bad accidents because of it.
Interestingly, the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic has published data which suggests that up to 45% of patients with sleep apnea, and 8% of patients with simple insomnia, report that they have had at least one car accident which they attributed to being sleepy while they were driving.
Another study even found that 93% of sleep apnea patients have had car accidents in which being sleepy or inattentive probably contributed to the accident! Extended shift work causes mistakes made to sleepiness.
A major factor in causing the Challenger accident was keeping people on their shifts for, and ignoring scheduled time off, for as many days as necessary to get the task done.
According to Coren, during the year before the launch the average shift length was 10 to 12 hours with work periods ranging from 10-18 days in a row.
One worker had 50 days in a row.
It's no wonder these people made mistakes, and failed to notice and react to crucial information that would have prevented the shuttle disaster! This type of problem also accounts for the Exxon Valdez disaster, and the accidents at the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plants.
The book "Sleep Thieves" was only written about a decade ago, yet in it, Coren quotes several doctors (especially residents and interns) who were too sleepy to treat their patients effectively due to the intensive and long work schedules imposed on them.
They "get so damned depressed sometimes, especially when things heat up in the ER, like on "Welfare Wednesdays"...
".
One doctor talked about "Gomers" which were "a sort of label we use for patients sometimes.
It comes from "get out of my emergency room".
You really don't want to see another patient when you are on call.
They take up your time.
They keep you from sleeping.
They make paperwork...
They don't understand that we might have been working for 16 hours or even 36 hours with no sleep.
Sometimes, when that happens, at least for me, my eyes get all blurry and hard to focus.
So I try to slow down and double check things...
But I can't tell my Gomer my problems, because if I do he'll think I can't do my job right, and if anything goes wrong we end up with lawyers and lawsuits...
".
Another commented "All you want to do is get them out of your ward.
You don't want to talk to them...
If you treat them like people, you are effectively punished for it.
First of all it means that you have to spend extra time with them, and that means more time in the ward...
Maybe when I go into private practice, I'll start to take an interest in individual patients, but not now.
Now, I'd rather sleep...
" I hope the conditions placed on interns and resident doctors have improved by now because I sure wouldn't want to be a patient of sleep-deprived doctors like these.
It is clear that there is a tremendous cost both individually and to society in general, of not getting enough sleep.
If you are sleepy and are driving a vehicle you run a serious risk of killing not only yourself but your passengers and also the people in the place you crash into.
Sleepy doctors run the risk of hurting or even killing their patients.
And people who have been working long shifts for many consecutive days can cause accidents that affect whole countries, or even the whole world (in environmental disasters).
Make sure you get enough sleep, and the world will be a safer place!
"This is how Stanley Coren's book "Sleep Thieves" opens.
He then goes on to point out that there is an epidemic of sleep deprivation in our society (which should be no surprise to anyone).
What is amazing is the cost of this sleep deprivation to us, not only individually but to our entire society.
Most of us have probably experienced at least one time where we drove somewhere even though we felt sleepy.
We don't realize what this means.
A German experiment found that one man who was sent out for a drive for just under 4 hours one night was actually asleep for about 20 minutes.
Evidently there was a something like a built-in autopilot that gave him just enough navigation information to prevent him from running off the road or hitting another vehicle.
According to Coren, if we are already sleepy and it is a time of day when sleepiness is strongest anyway, and we are driving, the urge to sleep at least for a few moments at a time becomes irresistible.
Even if we are only going at 30 mph, a 10 second period of sleep will result in you traveling 440 feet, which is enough to take you across several lanes of traffic and off the road for a distance longer than a football field's length.
That's scary.
This problem is especially significant for those truck drivers who have to drive long distances at night, without enough sleep, and often have got into bad accidents because of it.
Interestingly, the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic has published data which suggests that up to 45% of patients with sleep apnea, and 8% of patients with simple insomnia, report that they have had at least one car accident which they attributed to being sleepy while they were driving.
Another study even found that 93% of sleep apnea patients have had car accidents in which being sleepy or inattentive probably contributed to the accident! Extended shift work causes mistakes made to sleepiness.
A major factor in causing the Challenger accident was keeping people on their shifts for, and ignoring scheduled time off, for as many days as necessary to get the task done.
According to Coren, during the year before the launch the average shift length was 10 to 12 hours with work periods ranging from 10-18 days in a row.
One worker had 50 days in a row.
It's no wonder these people made mistakes, and failed to notice and react to crucial information that would have prevented the shuttle disaster! This type of problem also accounts for the Exxon Valdez disaster, and the accidents at the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plants.
The book "Sleep Thieves" was only written about a decade ago, yet in it, Coren quotes several doctors (especially residents and interns) who were too sleepy to treat their patients effectively due to the intensive and long work schedules imposed on them.
They "get so damned depressed sometimes, especially when things heat up in the ER, like on "Welfare Wednesdays"...
".
One doctor talked about "Gomers" which were "a sort of label we use for patients sometimes.
It comes from "get out of my emergency room".
You really don't want to see another patient when you are on call.
They take up your time.
They keep you from sleeping.
They make paperwork...
They don't understand that we might have been working for 16 hours or even 36 hours with no sleep.
Sometimes, when that happens, at least for me, my eyes get all blurry and hard to focus.
So I try to slow down and double check things...
But I can't tell my Gomer my problems, because if I do he'll think I can't do my job right, and if anything goes wrong we end up with lawyers and lawsuits...
".
Another commented "All you want to do is get them out of your ward.
You don't want to talk to them...
If you treat them like people, you are effectively punished for it.
First of all it means that you have to spend extra time with them, and that means more time in the ward...
Maybe when I go into private practice, I'll start to take an interest in individual patients, but not now.
Now, I'd rather sleep...
" I hope the conditions placed on interns and resident doctors have improved by now because I sure wouldn't want to be a patient of sleep-deprived doctors like these.
It is clear that there is a tremendous cost both individually and to society in general, of not getting enough sleep.
If you are sleepy and are driving a vehicle you run a serious risk of killing not only yourself but your passengers and also the people in the place you crash into.
Sleepy doctors run the risk of hurting or even killing their patients.
And people who have been working long shifts for many consecutive days can cause accidents that affect whole countries, or even the whole world (in environmental disasters).
Make sure you get enough sleep, and the world will be a safer place!
Source...