Sleep quality and work performance evaluation in Aydın Fire Service workers

This research was conducted descriptively and cross-sectionally to investigate the relationship between sleep quality and work performance in employees of the Aydın Metropolitan Municipality Department of Fire Service. The study was carried out with 187 people working in the Fire Department of Aydın Metropolitan Municipality between 01.09.2019-15.12.2019. Data were collected using Personal Information Form, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Job Performance Scale. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the collected data.The mean age of the participants was 34.36 ± 8.18 and all of them were male. 21.8% of them are undergraduates, 34.1% of them have associate degree, 26.8% of them are high school and 17.3% of them are in other education group. 59.2% are married. 14.5% of the employees are office personnels, 67.6% are firefighters, 13.4% are drivers and 4.5% are technicians. 20.1% of them are constantly shifting during the day and 79.9% of them are shifting day and night. 79.3% of the workers stated that changes in working hours caused sleep problems. 15.6% of the employees reported sleep quality as excellent, 40.8% almost good, 26.8% almost poor while 16.8% of the employees reported the sleep quality as very poor during the last month. When the distribution of information about the frequency of having problems in working voluntarily during the last month was analyzed, 29.1% of the employees reported never, 27.9% reported having problems less than 1 in a week, 31.8% twice a week and 11.2% reported 3 or more in a week. The job performances of the survey participants were generally medium (3.73). No statistically significant relationship was found between the job performances and age of the employees (p = .388> .05). Educational situations do not significantly affect job performances. The job performance of those who do not think that the change in working hours causes sleep problems is significantly higher than the group who think it does. For those who with very good sleep quality job performances are statistically significantly higher than those that report almost poor and very poor sleep quality. In addition, the work performance of those who have almost good sleep quality is significantly higher than those with very poor sleep quality. It was concluded that poor sleep quality had a negative effect on the performance of the firefighters. Frequent evaluation of sleep quality is thought to affect the work performance of shifted fire brigade personnel. Keywords: Fire-fighting, Sleep quality, Work performance, Shift