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Since fatigue affects nearly everyone in multiple ways, Harnett argued that using a systematic approach in which all stakeholders are involved
is key to achieving success. Organizations must "acknowledge the complexity of
managing fatigue," "prevent excessive duration of wakefulness at work," "provide
sleep opportunities between shifts," and provide "guidelines on how to handle
fatigue-related behaviors, errors and incidents."
Harnett, vice president of human factors for SIX Safety Systems Inc. discussed how a fatigue risk management system
approach accepts that humans make errors, that these errors are seen as
consequences (not causes) and are largely due to systemic failures. “Control,
therefore, shifts to changing the conditions under which individuals work
rather than solely trying to change the individual,” she said. Measuring
fatigue against safety and performance often requires a fundamental paradigm
shift, where an organization must first see fatigue as a fit for duty concept
needing to be managed.
Another point Harnett made was that having a fatigue risk
management system in place ensures the success of an effective risk assessment
process toward fatigue. She presented an approach to assessing fatigue-related
risk that follows a fatigue-related incident trajectory, where five points
exist where controls can be introduced to mitigate risk and prevent
fatigue-related incidents from occurring. These five points are 1) sleep
opportunity; 2) sleep obtained; 3) fatigue-related behavior; 4) fatigue-related error; and 5) fatigue-related incident. Controls include implementing formal tracking of assigned work hours; using employee surveys; providing symptom
checklists; instituting an error analysis system; and using an investigation
checklist postincident, respectively.
Harnett’s session was recorded during Safety 2015 and is
available for purchase on http://learn.asse.org.