Longer Shift Lengths Essay

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Recommended: Shift work effects on law enforcement officers

Studies have shown that those who experience longer shift lengths suffer from various ailments at a much higher rate, such as: pain, numbness, aching, and stiffness of the musculoskeletal. Longer shift lengths tend to lead to more fatigue in officers due to the high demand of police work and very little down time between shifts. On average, those working 12 our shift lengths got six and a half hours of sleep a night (Amendola, Weisburd, Hamilton, Jones, & Slipka, 2011). Six and a half hours is well below the daily-recommended hours of sleep and paired with a high demanding job, fatigue takes its tolls on the officers.
The shifts of a police officer are never steady, as opposed to firefighters who work a standard 24-hour shift (Basinka & Wiciak, 2012). Though 24 hours seems like a long shift, much of that time is spent sleeping, cooking, or working out. On the contrary, police officers are generally very busy from the start to the end of their shifts. Though firefighters have a very stressful job, they also have more downtime to recuperate than police officers. A …show more content…

Studies have shown that long; rotating shifts lead to fatigue and after long periods can lead to burnout (Amendola et al., 2011). Sleep deprivation from long shifts is a major contributor to burnout in police officers. When officers go to work already tired, not only do they not react as fast in critical situations, but also they lose desire for the job in general. Likewise, research found that those on 12-hour shifts had greater difficulty communicating between different rotations, resulting in added stress due to lack of knowledge about what was going on (Amendola et al., 2011). When passion is lost, officers cannot sufficiently serve the public (Basinka & Wiciak, 2012). Burnout is a dangerous condition that officers succumb to everyday, and without proper counseling can cost officers their

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