Testing the effects of sleep deprivation: 47 ABC pulls an all-nighter

Linda Hurley, the director of PRMC’s sleep lab says, “Being short on sleep is very serious. It’s a serious safety issue.” 

Hurley is siding with Ocean City’s mayor and fire chief when it comes to the current scheduling debate over first responder’s shifts.

Right now they’re 24 hours on, followed by 72 hours off. 12 hour rotating shifts is the proposed change.  Fire fighters believe it would disrupt their daily routines that have been in place for years. However, the mayor says there are safety concerns about working for 24 hours.

Hurley says he’s right says. She continues, “Your reaction time, your ability to carry that heavy hose, your ability to decide whether to rush into the house, or to go in the other way, your critical judgement is off. Your timing is off.”

Your memory is off as well. To prove it Hurley did some tests on 47 ABC’s Jobina Fortson on Thursday after she had a good night’s sleep. First, Jobina had to read a list of words. Hurley then took the paper away and Jobina had to write the words down. Jobina says she was “silently struggling,” but she got about half.  

Hurley replies, “That’s at least as well as I would have done.”

The next test measured reaction times. It was a model of a traffic light on the screen. When the traffic light turned green, Jobina had to click the tab.      

Her average reaction time was .449 seconds. For the last test, Jobina stepped out of the room and ten random objects were placed on the table. She got to look at them for 40 seconds and then it was time to list them. 

Jobina continues, “Water bottle, pencil, bracelet, earring, notepad, stapler, the glasses.”

It took her a little bit but she got one more. She goes on, “The green thing in the back that wasn’t the water bottle.”

She got eight out of the ten objects correct. However, the real test will come Friday morning. Jobina is staying up for 24 hours to see if she’ll have the same performance. Hurley says she certain it’ll be worse.

Naturally, 47 ABC knows the limits of an impromptu study like this, for example the small number of participants, that being 1. Click here for more sleep deprivation research.