Photo By Zeke Gonzalez | Dr. Nathan Kearns (left), research psychologist at WRAIR-West, and Lt. Col. David...... read more read more
Dr. Nathan Kearns, research psychologist at WRAIR-West, and Lt. Col. David Boland, program director and associate professor for the Army-Baylor Doctoral Program in Physical Therapy at the U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence (MEDCoE), presented the results of comprehensive sleep policy changes at the 45th International Committee of Military Medicine (ICMM) in September.
Dr. Kearns and Lt. Col. Boland joined 1,400 military representatives from 140 nations at the ICMM World Congress of Military Medicine, held in Brisbane, Australia. Their presentation covered the positive academic outcomes associated with the sleep policy changes for Army combat medics (68W) at Advanced Individual Training (AIT).
“MEDCoE leadership identified an issue and took actionable steps to ensure that students received ample time to sleep during their training,” Dr. Kearns said of the study's origin. “After implementing the policy, MEDCoE leadership received positive anecdotal feedback on the changes, but wanted to check the numbers to see if the policy was truly having an impact on students.”
The sleep policy designates seven hours of sleep plus an additional “flex” hour for sleep and empowers battalion commanders to enforce it. The policy improved pass rates for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT), resulting in signiant time and cost savings associated with recycles for students who fail exams during AIT.
“Despite notable limitations of a retrospective study with archival administrative data, our findings clearly showed the positive downstream impacts of the sleep policy on improved academic outcomes, including higher initial and overall pass rates on the NREMT, as well as less variability in pass rates between classes,” Dr. Kearns said. “We are hopeful that these data will spur expansion of these types of policies to other U.S. Army military specialties, U.S. military branches, and, ultimately, to other militaries.”
These findings have sparked international interest, with several nations, including the Australian Defence Force (ADF), considering similar sleep policies. Additionally, WRAIR-West and MEDCoE are looking to further this sleep research by collaborating with the Sleep Research Center at WRAIR to evaluate the extent to which the sleep policy is directly impacting sleep outcomes, as well as behavioral health, physiological health, and academic performance.
| Date Taken: | 11.05.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 11.06.2024 09:17 |
| Story ID: | 484703 |
| Location: | AU |
| Web Views: | 43 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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