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The effect of fatigue, sleep deprivation and onerous working hours on the physical and mental wellbeing of pre-registration house officers

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Abstract

The potential deleterious effects of doctors’ long and arduous shifts have received relatively scant attention.

This study addressed the effect of a 32 h on-call shift on 16 pre-registration medical house officers in St. James’s Hospital, Dublin.

We assessed 5 psychological parameters (Tension-Anxiety, Depression-Dejection, Vigour-Activity, Fatigue-Inertia and Confusion-Bewilderment) as well as 5 simple tests of alertness and concentration both pre-and post-call. The doctors were randomly assigned to be tested either pre-or post-call.

On average the doctors got 4.5 hours sleep during a 32 h shift. This long shift had an adverse effect on all the psychological parameters (p>0.05) except Depression-Dejection. The total mood disturbance score, which has been shown to correlate well with general psychological well-being, deteriorated significantly after the 32 h shift, p>0.005. Two of the simple tests of alertness and concentration (Trail-making test and Stroop Color-Word test) also showed a significant fall-off in performance with sleep deprivation, p>0.05, although the remaining tests (Delayed Story Recall, Critical Flicker Fusion and Three Minute Grammatical Reasoning Test) were not significantly impaired by the 32 h shift.

This study shows that prolonged periods of duty without sleep adversely affect junior doctors, both in their psychological well-being and in their ability to carry out simple tasks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, St. James’s Hospital, Dublin 8

    C. Leonard, N. Fanning, J. Attwood & M. Buckley

  2. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center, 94305, Stanford, CA

    C. Leonard

Authors
  1. C. Leonard
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  2. N. Fanning
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  3. J. Attwood
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  4. M. Buckley
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Correspondence to C. Leonard.

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Leonard, C., Fanning, N., Attwood, J. et al. The effect of fatigue, sleep deprivation and onerous working hours on the physical and mental wellbeing of pre-registration house officers. I.J.M.S. 167, 22–25 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02937548

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