Fatigue on the Frontline: Evidence, Risk, and the Reality of EMS Work with Professor Daniel Patterson

In this session, we’re joined by Professor Daniel Patterson, one of the leading international voices on fatigue, safety, and evidence-based policy in Emergency Medical Services. Daniel is a PhD-qualified researcher, Nationally Registered Paramedic, and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Daniel’s work sits at the intersection of frontline EMS practice, sleep science, and systems-level safety. He has led some of the most influential research programmes examining how fatigue affects clinicians, patients, and organisations, and, critically, what can be done about it.This conversation centres on the Fatigue in EMS Project, a landmark body of work that applied rigorous systematic review methodology to underpin the first evidence-based guidelines for fatigue risk management in EMS. Rather than relying on tradition or opinion, this research interrogates what the evidence tells us about shift length, napping, caffeine, education, workload, and fatigue modelling. Together, we’ll explore fatigue as a patient safety issue, challenge endurance culture, and discuss how high-quality evidence should shape the way EMS systems are designed and led. To read the studies mentioned in the podcast, please see here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352721822001814https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29324053/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3228875/