Fatigue Management

. Group Processes. Chronic fatigue leads to decreased interaction
with team members and degraded communication due to lowered
sensitivity to the usual cues and elements of social interaction.
Soldiers may lose their sense of humour and become
uncharacteristically moody, irritable, argumentative or socially
withdrawn, all of which can degrade group dynamics.
They hardly knew where they were marching. Some had
peculiar dreams or hallucinations. Others actually dropped
into a doze, shuffling along in the line of march by holding
on to the bayonet frog of the man in front. When a few
minutes rest was called, some men sank to the ground in
such crumpled weariness that they had to be stirred forcibly
to their feet. Left beside the track they would soon have fallen
captive to the pursuing Japanese.
Henry Steward
Recollections of a Regimental
Medical Officer, 1983
c. Impaired Command. Situation awareness, battlespace
visualisation, and other higher-order cognitive elements of
tactical decision-making are affected by mental fatigue. This will
result in slowed decisionmaking in some commanders. In others
there may be no change in the rate of performance in
decision-making; however the quality of their decisions will
decline. Furthermore, this decline in effectiveness is usually not
apparent to the individual. Fatigue can also lead to the uncritical
acceptance of irrational, erroneous or illegal orders. Due to
confusion, fatigue may also cause decreased willingness to
initiate action (decision paralysis). Decreasing performance
standards in others may go unnoticed.
d. Morale Effects. Fatigue impacts not only on the ability to fight and
command but also on the will to fight and command. Fatigue is
strongly associated with decreases in satisfaction, motivation
and interest in the prescribed tasks and activities of the group. At
the individual level, fatigue may foster a sense of pessimism or
fatalism, generate a tendency to think the worst and induce a
proneness to reject the group, take offence easily and magnify
grievances.
e. Diminished Personal Safety. As fatigue is detrimental to both selfawareness
and situation awareness, it leads to apathy, decreased
attention to personal hygiene, neglect of normal safety
precautions and procedures, and greater acceptance of risk. Sleep
may be regarded as a welcome escape, irrespective of the potential
dangers.
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