A mixed methods investigation into sleep inertia management for emergency service personnel

Sleep inertia is the temporary period of impairment to performance and alertness found upon waking. Due to the impairments associated with this phenomenon, sleep inertia is a safety risk for those who must perform tasks soon after waking. Emergency service personnel are one such cohort who can be impacted by sleep inertia due to the prevalent use of on-call and shift-work arrangements. These work arrangements place personnel in situations where they may be woken to respond to an emergency event. Due to the necessity to respond quickly to emergency events, a period of sleep inertia may occur while personnel are undertaking safety critical activities such as driving or performing skilled tasks as part of their role, potentially endangering themselves, colleagues, and the individuals they are attending to. Given the safety risk that sleep inertia poses for emergency service personnel, the broad objective of this thesis was to examine the causes, consequences, and potential safety measures for sleep inertia for emergency service personnel. This information could then be used to develop evidence-based sleep inertia management strategies for emergency service personnel. To accomplish this objective, this thesis used a mixed methods approach resulting in four separate studies to better understand the impact and management of sleep inertia on emergency service personnel.