Issue #83 – October 2025
Welcome to Focus on Fatigue!
October is National Safe Work Month here in Australia and the encouragement is for every workplace to practice ‘safety: every job, every day’, with the focus on providing practical guidance and ideas to implement the WHS risk management approach.
In light of this, we wanted to share some of the recent literature regarding Fatigue Risk Management Systems. These articles provide useful information for those working through how FRMS can be applied, particularly to areas where FRMS is still emerging, such as healthcare. The focus on a risk-based approach strongly aligns with InterDynamics’ methodology and we are always here to help if you would like to talk through how you might apply these principles to your context.
We’re also excited to share our continued, active engagement with the Port & Marine Industry in our InterDynamics News section.
The FRMS Team
Views expressed in articles and links provided are those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of InterDynamics (except where directly attributed).
In the Research
Creating a Fatigue Risk Management System
M Sprajcer, G E Vincent & D Dawson, Current Sleep Medicine Rep 11, 25 (2025)
This article provides a clear and practical overview of how organisations can move beyond simple compliance rules toward a risk-based approach to managing fatigue. It explains why eliminating fatigue altogether is unrealistic, and instead frames fatigue as a hazard that needs to be identified, assessed, and controlled like any other safety risk. The paper outlines the key building blocks of a fatigue risk management system (FRMS)—including governance, training, risk assessment, monitoring, and continuous improvement—while also addressing the challenges of implementation, such as balancing costs, responsibilities, and defensible controls. For those considering fatigue risk management, the article offers a concise framework and evidence-based rationale that highlights both the necessity and the practical pathways for reducing fatigue-related risks in the workplace.
Healthcare Staff Fatigue: The Unrecognised Risk for Patient Safety
L Pickup, N Redforn, E Plunkett, S Broadbent & M Young, Future Healthcare Journal, 12, 2 (2025)
This article highlights that fatigue among NHS and health-and-social-care staff is a pervasive yet under-acknowledged risk that undermines patient safety and the quality of care. It draws comparisons with other safety-critical industries that systematically manage fatigue via formal systems, showing how healthcare hasn’t kept pace. The authors describe the core components of a Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) — such as organisation-wide policy, governance, training, risk assessment, monitoring and mitigation — and share reflections from real experiences in healthcare settings. For anyone involved in healthcare management, safety oversight, or workforce wellbeing, this paper is useful because it not only highlights the magnitude and consequences of staff fatigue but also offers practical guidance and rationale for implementing a risk-based, systemic approach rather than relying solely on individual resilience or prescriptive rules.
Advancing Fatigue Management in Healthcare: Risk-Based Approaches that Enhance Health Service Delivery
M Sprajcer, A Robinson, M J W Thomas & D Dawson, Occupational Medicine, 73, 8 (2023)
This article advocates that in healthcare, managing fatigue by simply enforcing prescriptive rules—such as strict limits on shift durations or hours worked—is not sufficient, because doing so often fails to capture the real risks that workers face (e.g. circadian disruptions, variable sleep opportunity, rotating rosters). The authors advocate for a risk-based fatigue management approach: identifying fatigue as a hazard, assessing both its likelihood and its potential harms (to both health workers and patients), and implementing contextually appropriate controls (monitoring fatigue, designing safer shift schedules, considering worker recovery, etc.). For anyone responsible for safety, workforce wellbeing, or continuous improvement in a healthcare setting, the paper is valuable because it provides both a conceptual framework and practical motivation for moving beyond rule-based fatigue controls toward more adaptive, data-informed systems that better protect both staff and service outcomes.
InterDynamics News
RASP Integration
We are pleased to share that InterDynamics have been working with RASP to support the integration of FAID Quantum into their workforce planning software. By accessing FAID and KSS Scores in real time, this integration empowers schedulers with the insights they need exactly when they need them – during the labour scheduling process. RASP are committed to supporting the needs of the Port and Marine Industry.
Australasian Marine Pilots Institute (AMPI) Regional Ports & Pilotage Conference
We are thrilled to announce that InterDynamics will be at the upcoming Australasian Marine Pilots Institute (AMPI) Regional Ports & Pilotage Conference in Adelaide from 2-5 November 2025. InterDynamics’ Peter Page will be presenting on Biomathematical Models and will be part of a Q&A panel session on Human Factors & Fatigue.
