The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, with this much needed risk management guide, remind us, in their latest white paper, that fatigue is an ongoing risk factor in safety critical industry areas.  Particularly where 24hour service must be delivered.

I don't think many of us need to be reminded of this - I expect we ourselves are tired.  With high demands on lesser numbers of staff it is not uncommon to find staff doing extra hours, fitting in tasks out of working hours and not feeling able to put their rest as a priority. 

There are important life changing decisions to be made and they can be made by staff who haven't had a break to eat or drink in hours.

The paper helps to highlight that this cannot become 'the new normal'.

The objectives of the paper are 

1. To describe the impacts of fatigue on clinical performance, patient safety and staff safety.
2. To benchmark UK health and social care’s approach to fatigue risk management systems compared to other safety-critical industries.
3. To propose pragmatic ways to develop, implement and sustain an effective approach to fatigue risk management in the healthcare environment.

so it looks at 

• The problem with fatigue
• Fatigue risk management in other safety critical industries
• Taking fatigue risk management forward in healthcare
• The vision 
• How to achieve the vision
• A road map to fatigue risk management in health and social care.

There are case studies that look at how others have put this into practice in their areas from NHS ambulance services, acute hospitals and trusts from across the nation.   

It is an easy read with good ideas that you could start to put into practice now:

The fight against fatigue | CIEHF (ergonomics.org.uk)

View the white paper here Fatigue risk management for health and social care | CIEHF (ergonomics.org.uk)