Managing Fatigue
Fatigue can result from formal shift work, on-call work or from reduced opportunities for rest related to personal or work-related factors (such as health conditions, life events, stress, workload). Fatigue can be easy to spot - drowsiness, yawning and low energy, but also can appear indirectly e.g. irritability, inability to concentrate, increased errors, clumsiness or reduced coping. Some people are really good at monitoring fatigue and will prioritise time for rest and recovery. Others will soldier on, believing that either they can override their fatigue or that the work is too important/they are too essential to take a break. Where do you sit on that continuum? The challenge can be that work doesn’t go away and deadlines loom. For many people there isn’t anyone readily available to step in while we take a break. The research shows that we risk not only our own safety and wellbeing when we are fatigued, but that of our patients and others as well.
Is it possible to mitigate the risk of fatigue causing harm to safety and wellbeing AND strengthen performance?
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Override the desire to “push through” Studies have found that taking short breaks during the day helps to maintain performance later in the day, reduces perceptions of stress and creates passive processing space (helpful with complex thinking tasks). If lunch breaks are relaxing and social, there is an additional benefit, with mental, emotional and psychological functioning returning to the morning baseline. Interestingly, developing a sustained habit of taking breaks has sustained benefits, with increased vigour and energy levels at one year follow up.
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Attend to hours worked While many of us have clocked up long hours since COVID joined us, the research suggests that this becomes counterproductive when continuous beyond 3-4 weeks. In addition to this, the role of fatigue in errors and safety (e.g. driving home from work), and evidence of chronic health effects (cardiovascular, musculoskeletal) and reduced mental capacity (memory and attention) are well documented.
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Plan a recovery break If you have been going hard for more than 3 months, it is beneficial to plan a 5 day (ideally) continuous break sometime in the next couple of months. This is particularly important for those who have been working long hours and/or weekends with reduced opportunity for physical and mental rest. It may feel impossible, but the research shows us that without recovery breaks, eventually we will end up with a more disruptive forced break through illness or exhaustion.