EMS Shift Length and Provider Safety

Emergency medical services (EMS) providers work in a high-risk environment. To determine whether longer shift length is associated with increased rate of injury, these authors reviewed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)-reported injuries or illnesses and shift schedules for 14 large EMS agencies. The analysis included more than 966,000 shifts worked by nearly 4400 employees and 960 reported injuries over 3 years. In analyses adjusted for teammate familiarity, recovery time between shifts, overnight shifts, part-time workers, and size of the EMS agency, the authors compared injury/illness rates per shift for shift categorized as ≤8 hours, >8 to ≤12 hours, >12 to ≤16 hours, >16 to ≤24 hours, and >24 hours.

Median shift length…