She and her colleagues are looking for 40 pilots and air traffic controllers to participate in the study. Participants will spend two short visits at their home, work, or on campus with UNMC College of Nursing faculty. Participants will log their activities, as well as wear small monitors for five days that record activity and temperature. E.T. Foster, Ph.D., an engineer at UNO and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and UNMC graduate nursing students, Claudia Chaperon and Rose Bakewell. A lack of sleep causes fatigue, lethargy, insomnia, memory loss, decrease in judgment and paranoia.
Sleep deprivation can be dangerous.
Errors can occur and affect decreased reaction times and critical decision-making. The Department of Transportation's Office of Airline Information reports in 1998, more than 546 million passengers traveled by air in the United States on almost 8 million airline flights. Dr. Farr said research can improve aviation safety and may also have an economic impact in developing products that can alleviate jet lag. We hope to be able to get a better picture of what kind of disruption pilots and air traffic controllers are experiencing and develop ways to reduce fatigue and jet lag by improving sleep at layover points, Dr. Farr said. It will also help with shiftworkers such as air traffic controllers.