Occupational sleep medicine: practice and promise

Abstract

Occupational sleep medicine is a new field within sleep medicine. Occupational sleep medicine applies (1) the science of sleep, frequently as instantiated into mathematical modeling; (2) the tactics, techniques, and procedures of sleep and performance measurement in the operational environment; and (3) the clinical practice of sleep medicine to reduce the risks of poor performance, lost productivity, and error, incident, and accident in the workplace. As envisioned here, occupational sleep medicine will play a crucial role in fatigue risk management to, in the short term, improve performance, productivity, and safety and in the longer term improve worker health and well-being.