Article Outline

Scott Merkley
3/28/17
This article took into consideration the effect of sleep deprivation on

the work place. Researchers posed the question of whether getting 6 hours

of sleep a night or less was correlated with work related injuries. The

researchers hypothesized that less sleep would impair cognitive abilities and

in turn lead to more stress and higher chances for accidents. The study

consisted of 835 Indian workers who were given a questionnaire to fill out

themselves, men and women were studied separately to see if there would

be any correlations. Researchers also questioned the workers if they had any

problems with depression to see if that was also a cause of injury.

It is thought known that the frontal cortex is the region of the brain

where situational awareness, problem solving and mathematical equation

solving occur and that when you do not receive an appropriate night of sleep

these functions can be hindered. So the researchers set out to ask a study

sample questions about their experiences at work, occupational injury, sleep,

symptoms of depression, lifestyle, and presence of disease. The participants

were asked about their sleep habits related to occupational injury, have they

suffered an injury in the past year, depressive symptoms, and other

covariates such as age, gender, how much coffee intake per day etc.

Depressive symptoms were graded by using Center for Epidemiologic

Studies Depression scale.

 What the researchers found was 30.9% of the males in the group and

20.2% in women respectively had experienced occupational injury, and that

more than a third of the participants did not sleep more than 6 hours per

night. 25% of people had trouble waking up in the morning and many more

had depressive problems.

This study was done to show the relation between poor sleep and

harmful accidents in the workplace whether the injury be a cut on someones

finger to breaking bones. The subjects in the study were of all ages from 18-

65 testing if age was a factor. Sleep habits were seen as a huge factor as

when workers were tired or sleepy at work they were found to be nearly a

third more likely to get an injury. The conclusion the researchers came to was

that if your employees are tired at work then you should try to nourish their

need for sleep. Given a 15-20 minute nap during lunch could improve the

chances of having a workplace that has less injuries.