Summer is coming, and with summer comes vacations. And with vacations will often come time to do some reading – maybe that book that you have always wanted to read but just have not had the time, or you want to re-read that work that you have had on your bookshelf for years and you want to enjoy again while sitting on the beach or beside the pooo. To some extent, many of us have a “summer reading list” of some kind.
Here, I would like to offer a couple of options to add to your summer reading list, at least if you are one who likes to learn and grow in your profession as a health and safety officer. Who would not want to come back from vacation not just rested, but a little more intelligent?
[Image courtesy of Pedro Ribeiro Simoes of Flickr via a Creative Commons license]We encourage reading – which is self-evident, since we run a blog. But on occasion we make recommendations for important safety-oriented works that every professional should peruse. We make two suggestions this time around.
In the Interest of Safety
We have all heard this phrase in any number of contexts. This phrase seems to always come before a safety instruction meant to keep workers and others safe. What is said following the phrase is meant to be viewed as something in stone – as a hard-and-fast rule or law that everyone should follow or face the risk of serious consequences.
We are led to think that “the interest of safety” means, if you are interested in the safety of your own job and paycheck, you will have to follow what you will hear after “in the interest of safety” is said. However, how much of what we hear “in the interest of safety” is really hard and fast or even true? In The Interest of Safety, a book written by Tracey Brown and Michael Hanlon,looks into some of the “rules” of workplace health and safety and takes an objective look at where these “rules” come from and exposes the absurdity of some of them. Why absurd? Because, it turns out, many safety rules or regulations we think exist and we live by are actually the subject of the old childhood game of “Telephone” – something starts as a suggestion or recommendation, and the message is passed on from person to person, generation to generation of safety officers. As it works its way along and the message ets passed, it changes to where by the time it reaches the end of the line, this mere “suggestion” now becomes a law that violation results in jail time and heavy fines.
One of the main points of the book is to note that while many rules, laws and regulations are true and effectual from experience, the suggestion is that if something does not seem to make sense, make sure you get evidence of the existence of the rule. If it seems absurd, it just might be – but verify it as such. Brown and Hanlon take a look at a few of these safety rules, exposes their absurdity and teaches us all lessons about how we conduct our safety protocols and test us on how well we know our existing local and rederal safety laws.
Effects of Shift Work
We are all aware of the research that determined a causal link between shift work and cognitive function of the brain among those workers. But did you know that there are people who actually might be better suited for shift work than others, and that there could be a way to filter out potential employees for a shift job based on their “chronotype”? Is this prospective employee a morning or an evening person, and how does this matter in terms of ability to be a successful shirt worker?
A paper published in a recent issue of Biological Rhythm Research and written by Fatma Selvi, Sibel Karakas, Murat Boysan and others, looked deeper into shift work and the people who work shifts in terms of determining their levels of cognitive function, attention deficit and impulsive behaviors.
The research in the paper, which is titled “Effects of Shift Work on Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity, and Impulsivity, and Their Relationship With Chronotype,” analyzed nurses at a hospital – more than 200 nurses – and assessed their various levels of impulsiveness, hyperactivity, and the like, based on whether they worked days (almost 80 nurses in the study) and those who worked night shifts (more than 120). Upon being asked a series of survey questions regarding sleep patterns, level of impulsiveness and attention deficit while on the job, and then cross-referencing those results with those who claim to be “morning people” and those who are “night people,” the research found that “morning people” – those who claim to be more active and alert during morning hours – tended to report less attention deficit and hyperactivity than those who were “evening types,” regardless of whether they worked in the daytime or the shift work.
If you would like to learn more about the research, visit this link.