Comprehensive Police Fatigue Management Program

Police officers work some of the most demanding schedules known, which increases their risk of sleep deprivation and sleep disorders. The need to work frequent overnight shifts and long work weeks leads to acute and chronic partial sleep deprivation as well as misalignment of circadian phase. The public expects officers to perform flawlessly, but sleep deprivation and unrecognized sleep disorders significantly degrade cognition, alertness, reaction time and performance. In addition, both acute and chronic sleep deprivation adversely affect personal health, increasing the risk of gastrointestinal and heart disease, impairing glucose metabolism, and substantially increasing the risk of injury due to motor vehicle crashes.

We propose to conduct a randomized, prospective study of the effect on the safety, health, and performance of a police department of a Comprehensive Police Fatigue Management Program (CPFMP) consisting of the following interventions:

1. scheduling improvements and policy developments to mitigate the adverse effects of extended duration work shifts and long work weeks;
2. identification and treatment of police with sleep disorders;
3. caffeine re-education; and
4. initiation of a sleep, health and safety educational program.

These interventions were chosen because we believe them most likely to lead to measurable improvements on work hours, health, safety, and job performance, and because they are cost effective. The success of the CPFMP will be assessed through an experimental comparison with a standard treatment group that will receive sleep education in the absence of any accompanying interventions. The overall goal of our team will be to develop and test the implementation of policy and scheduling improvements and a sleep health detection and treatment program that can be disseminated to practitioners, policymakers and researchers nationwide to reduce police officer fatigue and stress; enhance the ability of officers and their families to cope with shift schedules; improve the health, safety and performance of law enforcement officers; and thereby improve public safety.