Identifying and managing fatigue in nurses completing on-call work

Specialist nurses working in Therapeutic Apheresis Services (TAS) at NHS Blood and Transplant participate in an on-call rota. This means working above and beyond their rostered hours and can lead to them working 24 hours in one period. There is a noted risk of fatigue for people who work more than 13 hours in one stretch, and therefore it is important to understand how to recognise and manage the signs of fatigue. A literature review was performed to understand fatigue in various industries and how this was managed. This was then coupled with TAS internal data collection, exit interview data and sickness data to inform the design of a Fatigue Identification Questionnaire filled out by nurses during on-call working. Due to the strong link between fatigue and the hours worked, it is recommended that further work is undertaken to implement fatigue-management processes.