Lay summary
Fatigue among healthcare workers can degrade patient care and increase clinical error rates, workplace injuries, driving accidents, turnover, and health care costs. Healthcare organisations and their workers each have responsibilities to minimise fatigue and maintain a safe work environment. Our previous work in nursing has identified work-related factors that increase the risk of fatigue-related outcomes, and we developed a Code of Practice for managing nurses’ fatigue and shift work in DHB hospitals, endorsed by the NZNO, WorkSafe, and the CTU. This activation project will extend that work in nursing and to other healthcare workers. We will build relationships with key stakeholders nationwide who can support and advise on approaches to improve fatigue risk management in healthcare. To determine research needs for future projects, we will survey leaders in healthcare on their awareness of best practice fatigue risk management and their readiness and willingness to engage in best practice approaches.