Field study examines how fatigue from shiftwork affects sleep and performance in helicopter air ambulance pilots, suggesting urgency for better management.
Introduction: Helicopter air ambulance (HAA) pilots are exposed to fatigue risk due to on-call and shiftwork operations required for 24-hour emergency service. Cumulative fatigue, circadian disruptions, and sleep inertia may reduce safety margins, particularly in consecutive nighttime shifts and on-call emergency flights. Previous research on fatigue in HAA operations has largely focused on European operators, many of whom operate through state-run emergency service providers. HAA services in the United States (US) instead operate as private companies, with a variety of company policies and environments that could differentially affect pilot fatigue and sleepiness. The current field study aims to investigate how shiftwork and on-call demands in US HAA operations influence sleep, alertness, and performance across different schedule types.
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Baumgartner et al. (2025) studied this question.
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