The unpredictability of call-outs at an individual level places a significant strain on emergency services staff, with proven effects on sleep and performance, for example. This strain also makes it difficult to balance family and working life, and affects women in particular, who still bear a heavier mental burden than men when it comes to organising the household and daily life.
The aim of the study published in *Chronobiology International* was to understand the perspectives of female emergency services staff when exposed to the pressures of on-call duties and standby shifts, and to explore the strategies they adopted to cope with these pressures. A group of women was therefore recruited from two Australian emergency services to complete a questionnaire and take part in an interview lasting approximately one hour. The interviews were recorded and transcribed using nVIVO software prior to analysis.
The data from the interviews highlighted two main themes: the impact of childcare or on-call duties on the women themselves, and the resources available to them to help them cope with these demands.
In the first case, the women interviewed spoke of their disturbed sleep, persistent fatigue, but above all the feeling of being constantly on call, which carried over into their private lives... They also described the profoundly negative impact that the uncertainty surrounding their deployment had on their family life and its organisation.
From the perspective of the psychosocial and organisational resources that enable people to better ‘cope with’ this uncertainty, the aspect of social support (from family, colleagues, line managers, etc.) as well as the quality of planning (working arrangements, childcare or on-call duties, etc.) and preparation for departure (routines, equipment, a ‘just-in-case’ family organisation plan) have been identified as some of the most important factors enabling women to successfully balance their different aspects of life whilst on childcare or on-call duty.
Whilst the detrimental effects on sleep caused by the uncertainty of being called out on call are well known and have been confirmed by numerous studies on larger populations (including men), for these mothers, the greatest challenge would therefore relate to their ability to balance their personal and professional lives, and more specifically to safeguarding the quality of the time they wish to devote to their loved ones.
Emergency services wishing to increase the number of female staff should therefore take a keen interest in assessing the impact that uncertainty about being called out on their female employees, but also to ways of optimising their on-call and standby arrangements, and of facilitating their access to the protective resources mentioned above, particularly anything that would enable them to improve the quality of the time spent with their close family and friends.