GovWire

Fatigue spans the spectrum of individual, job, and organisation related factors. Fatigue refers to extreme mental and physical exhaustion. Its not the same as tiredness.

Tiredness is a temporary state that you can recover from quickly with rest. Fatigue is an overwhelming sense of tiredness that is prolonged and cannot be recovered from quickly. Many factors can cause fatigue, such as a lack of quality sleep or stress.

Fatigue has several mental and physical effects, many of which can affect your ability to do a job safely. These effects can be:

• difficulty concentrating
• difficulty making decisions
• lack of motivation
• poor memory, coordination and concentration, and slower reactions
• low mood, irritability or mood swings
• falling asleep suddenly and without meaning to
• reduced amount and quality of communication

Other physical effects that may reduce performance, as well as having long-term health effects include:

• loss of appetite
• headaches
• nausea
• shortness of breath
• muscle pain or weakness
• palpitations

Fatigue can impair performance and decision making, making incidents more likely to happen. Sleep debt can be built if you do not have enough good-quality sleep, even for a short period of time. It can lead to issues with decision making and problem solving, as well as an increase in risk-taking behaviour. Therefore, it needs to be managed and mitigated like any other risk.

Managing fatigue in the workplace

Manage fatigue onboard

• Ensure rest areas are comfortable quiet, cool, and dark.
• Ensure good watch schedule planning, maintenance, and any other work. Consider when your team can have their hours of both rest and sleep.
• Try to prioritise rest hours, especially if there has been an emergency, problem or situation that has led to your team being fatigued.
• When planning training exercises or drills, try to arrange them so theres little disruption to rest periods.
• Encourage your team to practise good sleep hygiene and that the causes, effects, and mitigations of fatigue is well understood.
• Uninterrupted rest periods are important other staff (including shoreside staff) should facilitate this. If you notice that you or your team are fatigued, work to manage it.
• Make sure everyone is recording hours of work and rest accurately working beyond these hours is a routine violation (see section 2.3) and cultural change may be needed to address this.

Stress is our reaction to feeling under pressure. Its usually thought of as being negative but that is not always the case. Some stress and pressure are necessary in our lives to make us feel motivated and to allow us to feel a sense of satisfaction. However, when the pressure becomes more than we can cope with we can feel overwhelmed and burnt out.

Similar to fatigue, stress has an impact on so many things that affect safety. It can affect our performance, our decision making, our interactions with others, to name a few, and can lead to major incidents if not managed properly.

Positive stress is called eustress. Causes of eustress can include receiving a promotion, holidays and retiring. It can be noticed as someone with increased energy, focus, motivation, productivity, and a positive mood.

Negative stress is called distress. Causes of stress can include conflict with your colleagues, excessive demands at work, job insecurity, lack of training for a task, unproductive and time-consuming meetings.

Symptoms of negative stress

• Tiredness and fatigue.
• Low motivation, energy and focus.
• Shortness of breath.
• Nausea.
• Breathlessness.
• Palpitations.
• Mood swings.
• Poor mental health.
• Lack of libido.
• Back pain.

If stress seems to be widespread in your workplace, there could be a problem with staffing and management. Talk to your colleagues and try to get to the source of the problem and report it to management personnel.

The World Health Organization states:

Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

Some individuals may be more predisposed to certain mental health conditions, and these can be exacerbated by personal issues. Its important to assess the way their job and the organisation they are working in impacts on stress and mental health.

We all have mental health, just like we all have physical health. Just like with physical health there are times when our mental health is better or worse. Stress is one mental state that can influence our overall mental health.

Managing mental health

If youre concerned about a member of your team and want to speak to them about mental health, as a leader, you can:

• choose somewhere quiet where you will not be interrupted by other people to talk
• use open-ended questions such as: How are you feeling?
• let them say as much or as little as they want to
• just listen do not try and diagnose them or guess at what you think they might be feeling
• avoid any judgement or judgemental language
• encourage them to seek help and support them through this. You can signpost them to company or external resources for mental health. You might need to do some research beforehand to know what is available

If youre seriously concerned about a colleagues mental health, contact helplines and speak to a manager.

If you feel as though your mental health is being affected, seek help. Speaki

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