Much is known about compassion fatigue and its emotional burden on veterinarians. Less understood is how fatigue from inadequate sleep harms veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and veterinary nurses. Veterinary staff can feel tired after a busy shift in the clinic, especially now that treatment for the coronavirus pandemic is even stricter. Still, there seems to be little recognition within the profession that such conditions are as jeopardized as any infectious disease.
Sleep is a function of age, according to the National Institutes of Health. While teenagers need at least nine hours of sleep a night, adults need between seven and eight hours. Fatigue occurs when a person doesn’t get enough hours of sleep to match their age group.
Signs of fatigue are hard to ignore. Lethargy. Irritability. Difficulty focusing. Chronic fatigue is a far more serious condition described by the Mayo Clinic as “relentless exhaustion” that cannot be remedied by rest and can be a symptom of an underlying medical condition, including cancer or anemia.
Even the regular fatigue that results from long hours and inadequate sleep is a health threat. A study cited by the nonprofit National Security Council, which advocates occupational safety, found that workers who reported less than five hours of sleep were three times more likely to be injured in the workplace than workers who reported seven or more hours of sleep.
Jenny Burke, Senior Director of Impairment Practice at NSC, compared sleep deprivation to alcohol consumption. The effects of losing just two hours from an eight-hour sleep schedule are similar to drinking three beers. “Most of us wouldn’t have three beers and go home, would we? But we’re essentially doing the same thing when we take two hours to get a normal night’s sleep, ”said Burke.
When NSC surveyed more than 500 hiring managers to identify signs of employee fatigue, approximately 50% said employees fell asleep while at work, 57% said employees missed work because they were tired and a Third reported workplace injuries and near misses ”caused by tired employees. “These are just the incidents employers notice,” Burke said, adding that fatigue costs the US economy $ 400 billion annually.
Sleep is so important to physical and mental well-being that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are classifying insomnia and other sleep disorders as a public health epidemic. “We know that a significant section of the population has sleep apnea and doesn’t even know it,” said Burke. “Only 11% of actual sleep disorders are diagnosed and treated, so 89% – around 70 million people – have a sleep disorder and are unaware of it.”
Too busy to sleep
Little is known about fatigue and its impact on the veterinary profession, which in recent years has turned its attention to improving the mental health and wellbeing of its members. It’s worth noting that fatigue is linked to depression, decreased mental and emotional health, and burnout. Human medicine experience in this area can be insightful to veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and veterinary assistants.
For starters, health professionals have argued for more than three decades about the effects of fatigue on doctor performance and decision-making. In 1984, 18-year-old Libby Zion died in a state hospital in New York as a result of mistakes made by overworked doctors. Five years later, the state passed a law requiring residents to work no more than 80 hours a week or more than 24 consecutive hours. In 2003, the Graduate Medical Education Accreditation Council adopted similar standards for US medical schools.
I don’t think clinics know what to do when they hire emergency doctors, so they give them these crazy schedules like overnight stays on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Let’s see how long you can do this.
Dr. Armelle de LaForcade, executive secretary of the American Academy of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care
The debate resumed in 2017 when the ACGME lifted the 16-hour limit for residents in the first year and allowed them to work a 28-hour shift.
Last April, when the COVID-19 virus spread across the country, the CDC stated that tired and overworked health care workers “can put their own health and safety at risk, such as being at risk. B. Increase their susceptibility to infectious diseases, needle sticks and work-related muscle injuries, as well as burnout and errors in patient care. “
Then, in May, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine warned that physician burnout was a serious and growing threat to the medical profession. Although the prevalence is unknown, the Academy cited recent estimates that doctor burnout is 50% or more, with mid-career doctors at the highest risk. “Sleep deprivation due to shift schedules, high workloads, long hours, sleep interruptions, and inadequate rest sleep has been implicated in creating and maintaining burnout,” the AASM explained.
“According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, there is a critical need to assess the role of insomnia, sleep deprivation, and circadian malalignment in physician wellbeing and burnout. Such an assessment could pave the way for the development of effective countermeasures that promote healthy sleep, with the aim of reducing burnout and its negative effects such as a shrinking workforce of doctors, poor health and functional outcomes from doctors, lower quality of care and reduce compromised patient safety. ”
Long hours and little downtime are also a challenge for fourth-year veterinary students in the clinical training phase of their training. In 2019, Student AVMA updated its hours of service policy with suggestions that students should work no more than 80 hours per week, work no more than 24 consecutive hours on-site continuously, and be given breaks when on call. SAVMA has no authority to enforce these guidelines, but encourages all AVMA Council on Education accredited institutions to consider compliance with these guidelines.
Up all night
Emergency and critical care is one area of veterinary medicine where the effects of fatigue are most acute. Despite the high demand for veterinarians and veterinary technicians in emergency rooms and intensive care units, veterinary practices are struggling to retain staff and fill these high-paying positions, said Dr. Armelle de LaForcade, Executive Secretary of the American Academy of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care.
The reasons for the deficiency are different, explained Dr. de LaForcade, a faculty member at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. This includes work-related stress, dealing with difficult customers and a lack of professional development in veterinary emergency and intensive care that does not require a residency.
“Then there is the fact that you have to work five nights in a row. It takes you a day and a half to recover, but by then you will be back to work. “
Personnel adjustments that take these stressors into account are not common in veterinary medicine, noted Dr. de LaForcade feast. What is needed, however, is such a model that gives employees time to recover from night work. “I don’t think clinics know what to do when they hire emergency doctors. That’s why they give them these crazy schedules, like overnight stays on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” she said. “Let’s see how long you can do that. But clinics have nothing else to do and believe that once you have decided on emergency medicine, you have to enjoy working at night. “
Dr. de LaForcade is wondering about the health care costs of working the second or third shift in the field of veterinary emergencies. “We don’t know,” she said. “There are models in other professions that show how tired it is to work outside the bike from the rest of the world. There are studies that show that you are more prone to illness and other health problems. “
Ideally, according to Dr. de LaForcade, the ACVECC and the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society would collaborate on a study with the AVMA or another veterinary organization to identify a staffing plan that would promote longevity in emergency and critical care veterinary care.
Most of us wouldn’t have three beers and go home, would we? But we do essentially the same thing when we take two hours to get a normal night’s sleep.
Jenny Burke, Senior Director of Impairment Practice, National Security Council
“We need to look at practices that bind people and see what they do differently,” she said. “I suppose they put on something like three days on, four days off, which is crazy compared to other vets, but the emergency room is so stressful that you might need it.”
Large animal veterinarians, like their colleagues in emergency and intensive care, are very familiar with fatigue. The on-call shift, hours on the road, and dealing with patients weighing several hundred pounds can easily wear a person down.
“Fatigue is a very real problem for equine practitioners because our customers’ appreciation is often measured by our availability to them,” said Dr. Cara Rosenbaum, who works at a four doctor referral hospital and an outpatient center in Wauconda, Illinois.
“You might only work between 8 am and 5 am, but then you call and answer customer questions until 8 pm,” she said.
Dr. Rosenbaum prepared as best she could for the demands of a career as a horse practitioner. A student at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, she understood the importance of personal hygiene and helped launch a student wellness initiative at the Veterinary College. After graduating in 2017, she did an internship at an equine hospital for a year before joining the Wauconda practice as an associate the following year.
She quickly realized that there was more to learn, such as: B. To set limits to customers and not to be there. Dr. Rosenbaum, a member of the American Association of Equine Practitioners’ Wellness Committee, says she also “respects” her sleep more.
“I can tell the difference between burnout and fatigue,” said Dr. Rose tree. “When I’m burned out a bit, when I get away from work and climb my kayak for two hours or take the dog to the dog park, I feel better. But when I’m tired, I can do all the things I enjoy, and I still wake up the next morning without wanting to go back to work. “
“I think we forget that there is a physical part of being a great animal practitioner that adds to fatigue,” she continued. “I’ve already had shoulder surgery, and when it hurts after taking a hundred pounds of equipment off the truck for six appointments each time, it exhausts you in a completely different way.”