Driving drowsy

[Irishnights]

More nurses are stating they have driven drowsy and had near misses and actual collisions while driving home from a mandatory meeting or some mandatory education that was only offered in the day hours. There are more articles on the web this year about driving drowsy and the dangers than ever before. Hospitals need to offer their mandatory education either by DVD or during the night shift. Asking a nurse to sleep in her car until the class starts or to go home after a 12 hour shift and sleep for two hours and then get up/shower and return to work for some 2 hour mandatory.. ridiculous. They wouldn't ask a day shifter to get up at 1130 pm and come in for a class from midnight to 0200 would they? This is a great dissatisfaction marker for nurses. I am worried about getting killed on the way home from the minute I see that mandatory class pop up on the board. How many people have to be injured or killed to stop this nonsense? The best part... do you really think these nurse that have already worked 12 hours or have to get up pin the middle of their night will retain a single thing you presented... not!!!

[offlabel]

If drowsy driving is a regular part of someone's life, I'd rule out OSA first. But it is a thing. Knew an L and D nurse that was killed that way one morning.

[osceteacher]

We lost a member of staff who drifted on the road after a night shift in to a lorry, we can only assume she was too tired and just fell asleep. I always got the train home.

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

And??

It worked. Management started taking minutes during the meetings for staff that didn't attend to review

[Guest219794]

When I worked overnights in the ICU, there would occasionally be a staff meeting right after my shift. The whole driving drowsy thing was easy enough to mitigate by stopping and napping, and having an absolute commitment to not dying. I think most people involved in drowsy driving incidents had some warning signs. But, having powered through it before, they figured they could do it again.

A bigger hazard to me was the potential of drowsy speaking during a meeting. A lack of sleep can be similar to alcohol in reducing inhibition. On occasion, this would cause me to say what I was thinking. This is an unsafe practice during staff meetings, and I would ask a fellow night nurse to kick me under the table if it looked like I was going to speak.