The effect of mental work load on personals' sleep quality and reaction time, on the hospitals' laboratories of Isfahan

Abstract

Introduction: When people do mental activity for a long time, they will often see cognitive fatigue, reflected in deteriorated task function and decreased motivation to continue to work to do it. The present study aims to investigate the effect of mental fatigue and workload on sleep quality and reaction time in hospital laboratories staff in Isfahan. Method and material: Eighty personals of four hospitals' laboratories in Isfahan participated in this study. The end points and their predictors were measured at the beginning and at the end of the shifts. Mental fatigue, sleep quality, reaction time, Mental workload and attention were measured by Flicker perception equipment, Pittsburgh questionnaire, reaction timer equipment, NASA TLX online questionnaire, and CPT program respectively. Paired sample t test and linear regression was applied to the data using SPSS 20. Results: Sleep quality had highest correlation with reaction time. Linear regression results showed gender was the most effective factor on the sleep quality (P value <0.004).Education and attention were significant predictors of reaction time. Paired sample t test results showed mean number of errors and omission errors were statistically different between beginning and at the end of the shift work (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Most of the laboratory personals were female who had low sleep quality and high reaction time. Commission error could affect reaction time, by decreasing the commission error reaction time decreased. The reaction time could be also affected by education.