When I applied to work in a remote clinic I assumed that being on call after hours would be like doing night shift. It wasn’t. With night duty you know what hours you are rostered to work, with remote area after hour call outs, nothing is certain. You quickly learn that you could be woken up several times a night, rarely for real emergencies.Nurses are often told to educate the community on what an emergency is, but at 3am arguing with someone who’s woken you with a toothache,simply guarantees that you lose more sleep than if you just get out of bed and go and see them.

The US National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults need between seven and nine hours sleep a night. Continued lack of uninterrupted sleep results in sleep deprivation with potentially fatal effects.Remote area nurses usually have fatigue leave (if they don’t work in a single nurse post) which is supposed to make up for lost sleep. While we all value it, it is rarely a substitute for sleep. If staffing is short or clinic demands many, a nurse repeatedly on call can be functioning at a much reduced level of competence. When important decisions have to be made for patients health one has to wonder if the added responsibility put upon them to “educate” the community about what an emergency is, is a wise thing?

Among the many results of lack of sleep are an increased risk of accidents and injury, impaired attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, memory and problem solving. It can lead to health problems such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and depression. Judgement can be impaired, especially in regard to being able to assess what lack of sleep is doing to oneself. Also hurting their ability to make sound judgments because of a reduced ability to assess situations accurately and act on them wisely.

Before deciding to work in remote areas nurses do well to assess how well they function without sleep.