Sleep Disorders Management, Health and Safety in Police

Summary

The purpose of the study is to test the effect of a sleep disorders detection and treatment program for police officers on their safety, quality of life, and job performance. The program is called Operation Healthy Sleep. We will develop and test a sleep health detection and treatment program that we aim to apply nationwide to reduce police officer fatigue and stress; enhance the ability of officers and their families to cope with police work; improve the health, safety and performance of law enforcement officers; and thereby improve public safety. Part of this program will include a questionnaire asking about about work hours and health related issues. We will then look at how these survey data relate with data on police officer safety and job performance that we are collecting through police department's databases.

Sleep disorders are common and treatable, but often remain undiagnosed and untreated. Police officers work some of the most demanding schedules known, which increases their risk of sleep disorders. The public expects officers to perform flawlessly, but unrecognized sleep disorders lead to severe disruption of sleep, which significantly reduces an individual's ability to think clearly and perform well. In addition, sleep loss and sleep disruption affect personal health, increasing the risk of gastrointestinal and cardiovascular. We also know that sleep loss increases the risk of injury due to motor vehicle crashes.

The goals of Operation Healthy Sleep are to improve officers' health, safety, and performance by reducing the impact of fatigue.

The study will take place over two years. In the first year, half of the police officers will take part in Operation Healthy Sleep, and in the second year, the second half will participate. We will carefully select the year 1 and year 2 groups so that the data collected across the two years can be validly compared.

Conditions

• Sleep Disorders
• Sleep Apnea, Obstructive
• Restless Legs Syndrome
• Sleep Disorders, Circadian Rhythm
• Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Sleep Hygiene Education

Baseline general meetings with officers in intervention districts, in which we will provide an introductory program on optimal caffeine use (caffeine re-education) and sleep hygiene, as these are cost-effective measures that may effectively address difficulties adjusting to night work, and low-grade sleep disorders such as mild shift work sleep disorder across the cohort as a whole.

PROCEDURE

Screening and Treatment of Sleep Disorders

All individuals who screen positive in the questionnaires on the baseline survey will be referred to one of the physicians at Sleep HealthCenters® or other sleep clinics in Massachusetts. Individuals will be paid $40 for attending an initial consultation visit with a sleep clinician and $400 if they are then asked to undergo an overnight sleep study and they complete the sleep study. Individuals will also be asked to wear an ApneaLink device for 2 nights at home and for 1 night during the overnight visit at Sleep HealthCenters®. Subjects may be asked to wear the ApneaLink device for more than 2 nights if there are not 4 hours of usable data each night. If the data is inadequate, subjects will be asked to wear the device until 4 hours of usable data on 2 nights is achieved. The ApneaLink device is an FDA approved sleep-screening tool that is used to identify individuals that are at risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Brigham and Women's Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Charles A Czeisler, Ph.D., M.D. · Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

DIAGNOSTIC

Masking

NONE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2005-05-31

Primary Completion

2010-09-30

Completion

2010-09-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations