YoureSpecial t1_j1znzcc wrote on December 28, 2022 at 4:27 PM

Reply to comment by aedes in How do shifts work on really long medical operations? by TerjiD

IIRC the Navy did a couple studies after a rash of collisions and other ship casualties. The net result was to shorten the shifts in certain critical command/control positions - Officer of the Deck, Navigator, helmsman, Weapons Officer, etc.

The critical factors in all the casualties they investigated was that decision-making abilities and accuracy declined dramatically after a fairly low number of hours where these people were dealing with a state of constant information overload.

The shortened shifts flew in direct opposition to the prevailing “man up and deal with it” culture prevalent for so long. In the end, safety won out.

PerspectivePure2169 t1_j22k3ar wrote on December 29, 2022 at 4:37 AM

They haven't followed their own advice very well, because they still seem to be colliding and near missing ships pretty regularly.

Just had two in San Diego bay a short time ago.

I agree the watchstanding needs an overhaul or at least get it back to it was in eras our ships didn't burn down pierside or collide with freighters regularly.

Tidorith t1_j25vo9s wrote on December 29, 2022 at 9:54 PM

>IIRC the Navy did a couple studies after a rash of collisions and other ship casualties. The net result was to shorten the shifts in certain critical command/control positions - Officer of the Deck, Navigator, helmsman, Weapons Officer, etc.

Perhaps the takeaway really is that we need to invest significant resources into developing better procedures for hand offs that mitigate the negative consequences of them. Then we can shift the equilibrium closer to optimising for the first order effects of shift length itself.