The original news article has since been archived, but there was a horrifying case in 2007 where EMS in my hometown arrived at an accident for which they were unprepared because dispatch had mislabeled it as low-speed crash. There were 4 occupants in the vehicle, and, according to the fired EMT’s family, the front passenger was so badly injured that pieces of her brain were on the dashboard and she was unresponsive. The ill-equipped team worked to get the other three occupants out of the car and get them to the hospital and ended up assumed that someone on the crew had taken the presumed-dead passenger’s pulse.
As a result, a tarp was thrown over her body and she was taken away to the morgue where the coroner eventually discovered that she’d died due to her injuries rather than upon impact. All four of the emergency responders faced disciplinary action and I believe the family of the deceased won a lawsuit against the city.
The bottom line, and to your point, there are very strict guidelines and a lot of red tape before you get to say someone is “close enough to dead” to start carving out their organs.
Hood said the four paramedics were in the 21st hour of a 24-hour shift that began the previous day.
The ridiculous way we run 24 hour emergency services across the world is beyond dumb. How we get away with making EMS, Fire, and Healthcare work 12-24 hour shifts is beyond me.
10 hours is already stretching it with police (unions OP) or other professions like Security.
Yeah, non-police can sleep if they’re in a suburb. Until I see data that people running 24 hour shifts vs running classic 1/2/3rd shifts is better on their health, I’m forever going to doubt.
Alas, there’s no chance we’re mandating no working 2nd and 3rd shifts until we’re practically in a utopia already. The secret toll it takes on people is criminal without proper pay.
After 22 years, researchers found that the women who worked on rotating night shifts for more than five years were up to 11% more likely to have died early compared to those who never worked these shifts. In fact, those working for more than 15 years on rotating night shifts had a 38% higher risk of dying from heart disease than nurses who only worked during the day. Surprisingly, rotating night shifts were also linked to a 25% higher risk of dying from lung cancer and 33% greater risk of colon cancer death. The increased risk of lung cancer could be attributed to a higher rate of smoking among night shift workers, says Schernhammer.
Just want to point out, many, or even most, police work 12 hour shifts as well.
The second thing I want to point out is that many of these workers want shifts like that. Having to work (depending on your schedule) a 2/2/5/5 or a 3/4/4/3 is seen as a nice thing. I know people in all three of the public service front-facing jobs, and they would fight you if you (as a city council member or something) proposed to change the scheduling from a 12 to an 8.
The third thing is that rotating shifts suck. I worked one where we switched ever 3-4 weeks, and that was like gargling monkey balls as you try to wake up for that first day shift, or stay awake on that first night shift. I can definitely see how those can contribute to death and dying. Conversely, when I worked straight nights for two years, I never really had issues. Long term, maybe, but the article you linked even mentions that it’s the rotations specifically that make it bad.
Oh, and the fourth thing. Suburb or not, sleep is rare. I can probably number the number of times a night let you have more than 1-3 hours of sleep in the low scores, whether I was in urban, suburban, or bum-fuck rural (and I’ve done all three, at least 3 years each now). People are always ill, dying, or getting into trouble.
The point isn’t to work more homie. It’s to work 32 hours by hiring more professionals at 40 hours of pay. A shift is great until you realize what you should be working in 24/7/365 jobs simply because your employer or the citizens don’t want to pay for what your job truly entails.
You can complain about fighting their set schedules, but that’s the entire point of my comment, even if you glossed over the fact that 2nd and 3rd shifts are going to send you to an early grave regardless of shift hopping.
32 hour work weeks. Rotate days off but stay on your shift. If you work 2nd or 3rd, you absolutely require more pay. Chances are you’re going to die 5-10 years younger than your contemporaries. Hire more to cover the gaps without decreasing total pay. This is the way.
Now getting people to suck it up with taxes is another whole can of worms lol.
The original news article has since been archived, but there was a horrifying case in 2007 where EMS in my hometown arrived at an accident for which they were unprepared because dispatch had mislabeled it as low-speed crash. There were 4 occupants in the vehicle, and, according to the fired EMT’s family, the front passenger was so badly injured that pieces of her brain were on the dashboard and she was unresponsive. The ill-equipped team worked to get the other three occupants out of the car and get them to the hospital and ended up assumed that someone on the crew had taken the presumed-dead passenger’s pulse.
As a result, a tarp was thrown over her body and she was taken away to the morgue where the coroner eventually discovered that she’d died due to her injuries rather than upon impact. All four of the emergency responders faced disciplinary action and I believe the family of the deceased won a lawsuit against the city.
The bottom line, and to your point, there are very strict guidelines and a lot of red tape before you get to say someone is “close enough to dead” to start carving out their organs.
The ridiculous way we run 24 hour emergency services across the world is beyond dumb. How we get away with making EMS, Fire, and Healthcare work 12-24 hour shifts is beyond me.
10 hours is already stretching it with police (unions OP) or other professions like Security.
Yeah, non-police can sleep if they’re in a suburb. Until I see data that people running 24 hour shifts vs running classic 1/2/3rd shifts is better on their health, I’m forever going to doubt.
Alas, there’s no chance we’re mandating no working 2nd and 3rd shifts until we’re practically in a utopia already. The secret toll it takes on people is criminal without proper pay.
https://time.com/3657434/night-work-early-death/
Just want to point out, many, or even most, police work 12 hour shifts as well.
The second thing I want to point out is that many of these workers want shifts like that. Having to work (depending on your schedule) a 2/2/5/5 or a 3/4/4/3 is seen as a nice thing. I know people in all three of the public service front-facing jobs, and they would fight you if you (as a city council member or something) proposed to change the scheduling from a 12 to an 8.
The third thing is that rotating shifts suck. I worked one where we switched ever 3-4 weeks, and that was like gargling monkey balls as you try to wake up for that first day shift, or stay awake on that first night shift. I can definitely see how those can contribute to death and dying. Conversely, when I worked straight nights for two years, I never really had issues. Long term, maybe, but the article you linked even mentions that it’s the rotations specifically that make it bad.
Oh, and the fourth thing. Suburb or not, sleep is rare. I can probably number the number of times a night let you have more than 1-3 hours of sleep in the low scores, whether I was in urban, suburban, or bum-fuck rural (and I’ve done all three, at least 3 years each now). People are always ill, dying, or getting into trouble.
The point isn’t to work more homie. It’s to work 32 hours by hiring more professionals at 40 hours of pay. A shift is great until you realize what you should be working in 24/7/365 jobs simply because your employer or the citizens don’t want to pay for what your job truly entails.
You can complain about fighting their set schedules, but that’s the entire point of my comment, even if you glossed over the fact that 2nd and 3rd shifts are going to send you to an early grave regardless of shift hopping.
32 hour work weeks. Rotate days off but stay on your shift. If you work 2nd or 3rd, you absolutely require more pay. Chances are you’re going to die 5-10 years younger than your contemporaries. Hire more to cover the gaps without decreasing total pay. This is the way.
Now getting people to suck it up with taxes is another whole can of worms lol.