Sleep deprivation in servicemen as a factor reducing performance and deteriorating the effectiveness of job task execution

   The aim is to study the effect of sleep disorders on the degree of deterioration of military work productivity.

   Methods. The study involved 14 men aged 24 to 42 years old fit for military service for health reasons. At the preliminary stage of the survey, 26 people participated: all participants kept a sleep diary for a week and filled out a Horne-Östberg questionnaire to determine the chronotype. Persons with sleep disorders during the previous 2 weeks and extreme variants of the chronotype “purely evening” and “purely morning” chronotype (12 people) were excluded from the study. The effect of sleep deprivation was explored using a pilot study technique. The protocol assumed a double examination of each of the subjects: 1 – the initial examination (in the morning, after proper rest), 2 – the follow-up examination (in the morning, after night duty in conditions of complete sleep deprivation). The examination involved psychophysiological diagnostic methods: determination of the time and characteristics of characteristics of a simple visual-motor reaction and complex visual-motor reactions on the Psychotest computer-aided complex (Neurosoft Company, Russian Federation).

   Results. The study was performed on the Psychotest equipment (Neurosoft company, Russia). Working in the conditions of sleep deprivation led to a deterioration in the results of all the tests used, except for the indicators of the functional level of the system in the “Noise immunity” test and the preservation of the parameters of decision-making time (DMT), which confirms the preservation of the mobilization readiness of the central nervous system. The indicators in conditions of proper sleep and in case of sleep deprivation were as follows, respectively. Simple hand-eye reaction (217; 229), complex hand-eye reaction (306; 322), attention (221; 280), noise immunity – RT (248; 297). The analysis of the obtained data was carried out using standard methods of mathematical and statistical processing using the Statistica 10.0 program and the built-in mathematical functions. Nonparametric criteria were used for statistical processing of the results: the Mann-Whitney criterion, the Wilcoxon criterion. For all criteria and tests, the value of the critical significance level was assumed to be 0.05, i. e. the differences were recognized as statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05.

   Conclusions. They being associated with general fatigue after night duty, we noticed a number of impaired psychophysiological indicators characterizing the speed and accuracy of the reaction. The number of mistakes made when performing a difficult task increased, but the mobilization readiness of the central nervous system persisted, which was probably due to the high level of professionalism of the individuals.

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