Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
• To limit and cope with the fatigue that emerges during the night.
For example, in the hospital sector, nurses seek to avoid carrying out
some (physically and cognitively) demanding, delicate or hazardous
tasks, at a time where they know, out of experience, that they are less
vigilant. When this is not a detriment to the health of the patient,
they can elect to put forward or postpone an action so as to allow
themselves a resting period in the middle of the night. Forms of
cooperation also appear in the team when there is a need to move or
change a patient, or whenever a nurse is feeling too tired or not alert
enough to take good care of a patient: for example, when there is a
need to jab a patient infected with HIV (Toupin, 2012) or to replace
a drip on a premature baby (Barthe, 2000).
In a very different sector, customs agents elect to carry out,
in the beginning of the night, controls in strategic locations that
they know, from experience, to be most likely to present a hazard
(Prunier-Poulmaire et al., 1998). Conversely, they keep the areas that
require a lower level of vigilance for the later part of the night.
• To limit and avoid emergency situations, sources of fatigue and
stress (notably because of the lack of management) in order to have,
whenever possible, a work activity that is better managed. In a steel
mill, part of the actions aiming to assess the quality of reels are car-
ried out beforehand. Controlling one reel will lead workers to decide
which controls they will perform two or three reels down the line.
These control anticipations are more frequent when the workers are
experienced, and when the work is carried out at night. This mode
of operation allows workers to avoid working in an emergency, at a
time where their wakefulness may be reduced and their memory
less effective (Pueyo et al., 2011).
In the hospital, nurses make sure, at the beginning of the night
shift, that the medical prescriptions will allow them to deal with
potential anxiety attacks of the patients who they will be responsible
for during the night (Toupin and Volkoff, 2007; Toupin, 2012). The
level of anxiety of the patient is a very important parameter, since it
affects how the night will play out - for the patient and for the team
of caretakers, particularly the nurse in charge of that patient, but
also for other patients in the department who, following the call of
an anxious patient, may wake up, possibly feeling in pain or anxious
themselves. Nurses also make a point that the first round should be
done early, so that they can see as many patients awake as possible,
construct a representation of their state of health, and imagine how
the night is going to play out for the patients and for themselves.
Similarly, in process control, controllers collect twice as much infor-
mation per unit of time at the start of their shift than during the rest of
