zzzWhat? Huh? Oh, hi! April 28, 2011
Posted by nurseandlawyer in Lawyer, Nurse.Tags: naps, Ray Lahood, Safety, sleep
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So, about the air traffic controllers, ray lahood, and sleeping on the job?
NPR had a blog post about this which hits some good points.
Nurse: as a former (and hopefully never again) night-shift worker, this is near and dear to my heart! Studies on nurses (and others) have shown that a brief nap can increase alertness significantly, yet the transportation department secretrary says basically that air traffic controllers can nap on the job over his dead body! As this post above points out, smoking, eating, pooping = ok, but scheduled napping = not ok? couldn’t they actually be causing danger with this inflexibility? i don’t know how this stuff is regulated, but it seems. . . bad.
Lawyer: OSHA could probably institute rules about required nap periods available for overnight workers, and if they can’t, Congress could give them the power to. The more data we can give them, the better.
In terms of lawsuits, I imagine it would have to be abundantly clear and unavoidable that the employer knew its policies were putting passengers (patients, etc.) at risk, and willfully ignored the danger, to get anywhere at all. So more studies, more articles, more publicity.
Nurse: we’re talking not only the health of workers, but the safety of the peopel who are depending on them– in this case, passengers, in my case, patients. these are not low-stakes jobs, people! we’re not just talking about the night watchman at sears here!
let’s get ray lahood to work overnight shifts for the next two weeks and stay awake the whole time. . . . who’s with me?
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