Effects of Sleep Deficiency on National Guard Personnel Responding to Disasters

This study proposes to examine the prevalence and consequences of sleep deprivation and fatigue for National Guard service members who are part of the [EMEDS Consequence Management (CM)] medical response team.

Our long-term goal is to help protect the health of our service members, civilian disaster response partners, and victims of disaster. The main objective of this study is to [determine the prevalence and impact of sleep deprivation on National Guard medical personnel responding to a major disaster.] .

To accomplish our objective we will: 1) [Estimate the prevalence of sleep restriction, deprivation, and fragmentation on National Guard members participating in disaster training; and 2) Assess the impact of sleep restriction, deprivation and fragmentation on operational performance during disaster training.

Outcomes from the proposed work are: 1) an understanding of the prevalence of sleep restriction, deprivation, and fragmentation on National Guard members during disastertraining, 2) an estimate of the impact of sleep restriction, deprivation, and fragmentation on National Guard member critical skills performance, and 3) a set of research-based recommendations for medical and nursing commanders that address sleep health for service members under their command.] Collectively, these outcomes will allow us to assist in improving mission capability by reducing fatigue-induced errors by National Guard service members.

Final Report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2018101...