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Fatigue in the Defence Force
The physical and psychological effects of fatigue experienced by military personnel is the same as with non Military personnel, however , due to the unique conditions and situations soldiers of the Australian Defence Force face whilst on duty and on operations, the outcomes that occur as a result of fatigue are incomparable.Insomnia is a major cause of fatigue within the personnel of the Australian Defence Force. Due to the high arousal to the stressors of combat, jet lag and time differences when on location, worry about family at home, environmental factors of new locations and disturbing dreams and thoughts – soldiers are often faced with difficulty in sleeping, even when they are given appropriate opportunities for sleep.
Effects of Fatigue while on operation
- Degraded Mental Processes – may prevent reactions required to manage changing situations
- Group Processes - soldiers behavioural patterns may be affected causing degradation of group dynamics
- Impaired Command – this can result in slowed decision making in commanders; declination of quality of decisions or acceptance of irrational, erroneous or illegal orders
- Morale Effects - fatigue can cause personnel to engage a sense of fatalism and unwillingness to fight and command
- Diminished Personal Safe - a soldier may be inclined to neglect normal safety precautions and procedures putting themselves and others at increased danger
- Reduced Attention - soldiers are slow to notice occurrences in their environment such as the approach of an enemy
- Communication Difficulties – individuals may be unable to verbalize coherent messages and may omit important information in orders or reports
- Inability to Concentrate – fatigue may make it difficult for personnel to comprehend complex directions or perform numerical calculations and are easily confused
- Increasing Omissions and Carelessness – this may result in a failure to perform weapons checks or unauthorised discharges.
- Decreased Vigilance – Soldiers may fail to detect targets, especially during monotonous tasks or in tedious environments such as operation surveillance
- Slowed Comprehension and Learning - task completion times are extended such as comprehending a message and acting upon it or finding a location on a map
- Encoding/Decoding Difficulties - increased time frame and mistakes made when decoding map coordinates
- Hallucinations – fatigue may result hallucations that cause the soldier to respond inappropriately
- Muddled Thinking - inability to reason with simple tactical situations may cause irrational thoughts, poor logic and false beliefs
- Faulty Short-term Memory - Personnel may find it difficult to recall the content of a radio message or to assimilate new information
- Slowness in Perception – when fatigued, a soldier may find it difficult to understand things seen or heard, especially patterns; for example, the significance of changes in fire patterns or aircraft movements may be missed
- Slow and Uneven Responsiveness – a soldier who is fatigued becomes slower to respond to events, with some reactions degrading quicker than others
- Task Complexity – monotonous or complex tasks are more seriously effected by sleep loss
Australian Defence Force Health and Safety
Occupational Health and Safety (Safety Standards) Regulations 1994
Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991
Division 11.1 Introduction
11.01 Object of Part 11
The objective of this Part is to control driver fatigue, and to ensure the safety of drivers and other people:
(a) by the implementation of suitable plans to manage the fatigue of drivers of heavy trucks, buses and commercial buses; and
(b) by requiring employees and contractors to comply with driver fatigue management plans; and
(c) by requiring consignors, consignees and other people not to act in a way that imposes unreasonable timeframes on drivers.
Division 11.2, subsection 11.04 and 11.05 specifies that Australian Defence Force employers have a duty to assess and manage fatigue of drivers and identify any significant risk of injury or any risk of death arising from the fatigue of a driver. Once a risk is identified an employer must then arrange for an assessment of the risk. The Fatigue Calculator provides a scientific method of identifying and assessing individual fatigue-related risks and consequential hazards.
Subsection 11.07 then goes on to state that an employer has a duty to develop and implement a driver fatigue management plan that takes into account the following through utilization of rosters:
ii) time taken to perform tasks;
iii) the rest periods required to recover from the fatigue effects at work; and
iv) the cumulative effects of fatigue over more than one day
The Act then states that the Fatigue Management Plan should make compensation for training and education of drivers about fatigue management including:ensuring the drivers fitness for duty before commencing work;
planning the drivers non-work time to ensure that the driver rests adequately;
and ways of recognizing and dealing with fatigue.
Utilising Fatigue Calculator within the systems of a Fatigue Management Plan, the identification and assessment of fatigue within Australian Defence Force Personnel can be controlled to prevent the aforementioned outcomes of fatigue.
In the cases where “eliminating” the fatigue risk is not an option other measures can be implemented to minimise the effects of fatigue if a medium or high risk score is obtained. Refer to Fatigue Management Plan for suggestions.