To be an airline pilot is most of the time described in terms of duties, job requirements, proficiency, training, employment opportunity, and good salary. These features picture a plain profile that fit into the specification of just an ordinary career. However, an aviation career comes with many challenges than expected. When focusing on statistics about being a pilot, it indicates a lifestyle that many inspire to work despite the many challenges that face this career. The challenges that pilot face revolve around being rested during long flights, performing unexpected, simultaneous tasks, and passing the medical examination in order to remain qualified. When combined with fatigue due to long flight hours, these different aspects can be crucial and play a vital role in the airlines pilot’s lifestyle.
Long Flights and fatigue on Airline Pilots
Pilot fatigue is a hazard and is recognized as a major threat to aviation safety. Various factors are described as the major cause of pilot fatigue. These factors include long fight periods, high workload without sufficient rest, night flying, circadian disturbance and early start and late finish (Powell, D; Mick B; David; Petrie, K. 2008).
Other challenges that are experienced by the pilot are interruption, mostly by other personnel when they are performing procedures at the airport. From the time, the pilot enters the airport they are likely to be interrupted by a gate attendant, flight attendant, ground employees, and many others. Also, if there is passenger misconduct, pilots are also interrupted in order to deal with such cases. For example, if a flight attendant is be unable to handle a difficult passenger, the situation is reported to the pilot ...
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Handling and operating an airplane comes with great risk, but these risks that are present are handled with very different attitudes and dealt with in different ways depending on the environment the pilots are in.
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the impact of working hours (8 vs. 12 hour shifts) on fatigue among the nurses. These studies revealed that twelve-hour shifts increase the risk of fatigue, reduce the level of alertness and performance, and therefore reduce the safety aspect compared to eight-hour shifts (Mitchell and Williamson, 1997; Dorrian et al., 2006; Dembe et al., 2009; Tasto et al., 1978). Mills et al. (1982) found that the risk of fatigues and performance errors are associated with the 12-hour shifts. Beside this, Jostone et al. (2002) revealed that nurses who are working for long hours are providing hasty performance with increased possibility of errors.
In the recent past, nursing has come to the forefront as a popular career amongst students across the globe. The demand for nurses has kept increasing gradually over the years. In fact, the number of registered nurses does not meet the demand of the private and public health sector. This phenomenon has resulted in a situation where the available registered nurses have to work extra hours in order to meet the patients’ needs. With this in mind, the issue of nurse fatigue has come up as a common problem in nursing. According to the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), nurse fatigue is “a feeling of tiredness” that penetrates a persons physical, mental and emotional realms limiting their ability to function normally. Fatigue does not just involve sleepiness as has been assumed before. It involves utter exhaustion that is not easily mitigated through rest. When nurses ignore the signs of fatigue, they risk the development of chronic fatigue and other health problems that may not be easily treated. Additionally, fatigue may cause nurses to lose more time at work as they may have to be away from work for several days to treat it. The issue of nurse fatigue has permeated the nursing profession to the extent of causing errors in the work performed by nurses. Fatigue causes a decrease in a nurse’s ability to make accurate decisions for themselves and their patients. It is therefore important to find ways to curb nurse fatigue such that it is no longer a problem. Nurse fatigue is a danger to the patients, organizations and to the nurses themselves and must be mitigated adequately.
People are living longer and healthier lives now more than ever before. Much of this can be attributed to the advances in modern medicine over the past few decades. However, in healthcare, there is now a growing population of patients that are becoming sicker and more complex to care for. With the new generation of sick patients present in the hospitals, today’s nurses are stressed and fatigued more than ever before. Much of the stress and fatigue can be attributed to the nurse to patient ratio and the associated workload.
Pilots are professionals at their jobs. When people step into a plane they should feel safe and comfortable. When flying people are putting their life into the pilot's hands. But don’t worry not everyone can just fly a plane. Pilots need to take many classes and fly for many hours with an instructor before they can get the lowest and most basic pilot license. Pilots also need to log so many hours before they can go through the next stage of lessons to get a high ranked licsons. Just to get a private pilots license pilots need to log over 250 hours. Pilots fly many different types of planes to log their hours before they can fly commercial airliners. When they first step foot into a passenger plane they do not take the controls right away. They must go through the stages of being a co-pilots first and build up their experience. Being a co-pilot builds up experience but also gets the pilots comfortable with their surroundings. Pilots must log over 2,000 hours of being a co-pilot and then go through more schooling and training. When you walk into a plane usually the pilot stands by the door and greets his passengers When ...
Fatigue is a typical sign of an underlying stress related condition. The body’s sympathetic nervous system (SNS) releases an epinephrine (adrenaline) hormone, along with increased heart rate, as an automatic “fight or flight” response to a stressful situation. Long term fatigue and adrenal exhaustion is bound to develop over time as police officers are repeatedly met with stressful situations. To work as a police officer, staying alert and maintaining concentration is necessary; therefore, rest is also necessary to preserve
Employees failing to take a break to rest and recover from manual labor leads to fatigue. This can also lead to physical issues, exhaustion and atrophy. For employers who work their employees’ 10-hour shifts, research has found accidents increase rapidly during the last 2 hours of the shift, mostly due to fatigue (Donlon, 2016). Fatigue is also a leading cause of highway accidents. Bus drivers and truck drivers who fall asleep while driving are related to fatigue and contribute to 10% of all collisions (Schultz & Schultz, 2016). Encouraging employees to not only get a good night’s sleep, but also to take their regularly scheduled breaks will cut down on fatigue and costs of fatigue related
Fatigue: Fatigue is classified as a task related factor (Hsiao & Simenov 2001). This suggests that given tasks that are being done at different duration and intensities can result to fatigue. Consequently workers ability in processing perceptive and visual information that is related to incident avoidance during work is decreased due to fatigue. Furthermore, fatigue can have different factors of origin that is influenced by non work related situations and the individuals characteristics which then affects the workers ability and performance during work (Swaen et al. 2002).
...th during deployment as well as in the United States Army hospitals. The deployment setting can test military nursing workers in ways that are not the same as what is typical for private citizen nursing employees who practice in traditional civilian hospitals. Providing nursing care to traumatically wounded American military personnel and enemy combatants and living in rigid circumstances are cases of some of the stresses deployed nurses suffer. Depersonalization is also a huge risk factor of burnout in military nurses. One factor that is helpful in avoiding burnout in the Army setting is that physicians, RNs, LPNs and medics all cooperate in ways that may be unusual in a private citizen hospital. In the military setting, the scope of practice increases and nurses are most often times reinforced entirely by their colleagues (Lang, Patrician and Steele, 2012).
Is the fatigued officer, pilot, fit for duty? New pilot fatigue rules went into effect January of 2014, limiting pilots to fly no more than eight or nine hours, depending on when their shift starts, and each week must have 30 consecutive hours of rest. No such rules exist governing nurses. There are only voluntary recommendations that nurses limit their work hours. Sleepiness and fatigue often coexist in the nursing profession. Even though fatigue can be associated with multiple causes this paper will focus on the impact of excessive workloads, rotating schedules and the number of hours per week nurses work contributes to nursing fatigue. The relationship of work schedules to nurse and patient safety will also be explored. Nurses, RNs, LPNs, CNAs and other health care workers who are fatigued could be placing both the patient and themselves at risk. This is substantiated by research that links fatigue to adverse events for patients and health problems for health system
Sleepiness is no doubt, the most prevalent form of fatigue in pilots and there are many ways to attack this symptom. Obviously, the first and foremost is to get a good night’s sleep. It is recommended that people get at least eight hours of uninterrupted but some people
Huffcutt AI, Pilcher JJ. Effects of sleep deprivation on performance: a meta-analysis. Sleep. 1996; 19(4):318-326.
In order to further decrease the number of airplane accidents stricter measures of evaluating an aircrafts operability prior to take off need to be implemented. Additionally, better training of pilots can also lead to a more preferable outcome should a problem arise as the pilot will be better equipped to handle an emergency.
The intent of this research is to provide the reader with insight on how Crew Resource Management (CRM) improves safety in aviation organizations. This research will also present how CRM establishes a set of guidelines, behavioral norms, and standard operational practices that enables an organization to utilize all resources available to conduct safe and efficient flight operations. CRM encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, aeronautical decision-making, information management, and teamwork (Royal Aeronautical Society, 1999). CRM is also a synergistic approach to managing flight operations, and allows crews to dynamically multi-task and prioritize work efforts in order to conduct their operations more efficiently and safely. Over the last three decades, the NTSB, NASA, the FAA, ICAO, the military, and the airline industry have created CRM programs, and extensively researched and tested new and innovative ways to incorporate CRM with cockpit automation.
Lets think about a job that allows you to soar through the air like an eagle, without a care in the world, the job of a pilot is an amazing job that provides you with three things freedom, fully using your sight, and control.