Sleep Differences in Firefighters: Barracks vs. Home.

It has been shown that the firefighter occupation leads to poor sleep quality and sleep architecture. Disturbed sleep in these occupations can lead to deleterious outcomes including a series of chronic diseases and illnesses such as CVD. The aims were (1) to quantify firefighters' sleep via polysomnography, (2) to identify differences between sleeping in the barracks versus sleeping at home, and (3) to compare firefighter data to age-matched normative data. We expected significant differences between both the home and the barrack conditions as well as significant differences when both conditions were compared to normative data. 10 male firefighters completed 3 nights of polysomnography recordings (SleepProfiler Three important variables, cortical arousals ( The data demonstrates that firefighters show poor sleep quality and heavily impacted sleep architecture. This may be due to the effects of rotating shifts and occupational stress on the sleep-wake cycle. These results, when compared to age-matched normative data, show clinical manifestations of disturbed sleep in the firefighter population.