Abstract:
An occupational fatigue risk management standard is a timely initiative for thousands of first responders in Canada. Fatigue is a pervasive problem in paramedic, police, and firefighting occupations, where personnel experience significant levels of physical fatigue, cognitive task- and sleep-related fatigue, burnout, and emotional fatigue. A fatigue risk management standard is being developed and is informed from several sources, including a scoping review of first responder fatigue literature. The objective of this paper is to report on findings from the scoping review to (1) identify measures and tools used by researchers to assess fatigue-related risks, and (2) organize these measures and tools into adapted SOBANE risk management categories to facilitate their selection by organizations and occupational health and safety practitioners. We identified 60 unique measures and tools for the five different dimensions of fatigue across all first response occupations. Several fatigue measurements found in occupational fatigue literature and critical industry fatigue management were not reported; future research should investigate the development of predictive models and the reliability and validity of these tools in first response. The results of this scoping review provide a starting point for organizations to assess fatigue, of any dimension, but the psychometric properties of the identified measures and tools should be considered.