Feeling groggy? Before you reach for coffee, you might want to consider a different approach, doctor. Ever consider napping? Find an empty hospital bed or exam room, or go out to your car, crank up the AC, and nod off for 15-30 minutes. Research suggests that there are numerous reasons why physicians should nap. But before we cover the researched reasons why you should nap, we need to knock out some of the nap-related stigma. First, napping isn’t just for kids. According to a 2009 Pew study, nearly a third of American adults say that they nap. And napping is not lazy. Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Albert Einstein — among a myriad of others — were all ardent nappers and definitely not lazy. The “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” attitude and practice may in fact be deadly. Increasingly, research is showing sleep’s inexorable link to the quality of our health, even linking sleep deprivation to the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain. Not sleeping was cool in the ‘80s. But so were acid wash jeans, double-breasted suits with wide ties, and doing cocaine. A nap improves cognitive function You know what is cool? Improving your cognitive function. What doctor wouldn’t benefit from that? A 2009 meta analysis of sleep studies published in the Journal of Sleep Research puts a great deal of recent nap research findings in one place. For a doctor struggling to stay awake, the research shows that he or she can expect improved vigilance, logical reasoning, and reaction time. Here’s some particularly applicable research, incorporated into the meta analysis. A 2007 study published in Sleep and Biological Rhythms looked at the effects of napping on healthcare shift workers. Nursing staff and “scientists” received 30-minute nap breaks during shift work. Researchers measured the hospital workers’ self-reported levels of sleepiness and performed alertness tests on shifts when test subjects received and didn’t receive naps. On shifts during which the participants napped, the hospital workers had improved reaction times by 10% and lower levels of sleepiness. Researchers add that the improvements persisted until the end of the workers’ shifts. The benefits of napping aren’t exclusively cognitive. If you find yourself short on patience with patients or colleagues on sleep-deprived days and nights, a nap might be just what you need. A 2015 study published in Personality and Individual Differences looked at participants’ abilities to handle impulsiveness and frustration with and without naps. Results showed that the nappers were better able to cope with frustration and reported feeling less impulsive. Those who didn’t nap reported the opposite. For the purposes of this study, the participants received a “brief, midday nap.” A nap helps you learn A quick nap also has proven benefits for any doctor trying to learn anything — from a new EHR to a patient’s name. A 2003 Harvard study found that a nap was just as good as a full night’s sleep for learning how to perform a perceptual task. In 2008, researchers published a study in Behavioral Brain Research that compared caffeine and naps regarding how they affect verbal, motor, and perceptual memory. Researchers concluded from the placebo-controlled trial that a nap had the same effect as caffeine on all three. Associative memory is the brain’s ability to perform tasks, such as matching a name with a face. It turns out a nap could even help you remember more of your colleagues names. A 2015 study published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory concluded that while your associative memory might improve from a nap, your item memory will not. Better write down that grocery list. If you want to maximize the benefits of your nap, the National Sleep Foundation recommends that you do the following: Keep it short (20-30 minutes). Anything past that and you hit a point of diminishing returns with grogginess. Keep it cool, dark, and quiet if you want to sleep soundly. Don’t nap too late in the day. It could disrupt your circadian rhythm and make it harder to sleep at night. If you need an emergency nap (as in you’re nodding off in a meeting or feeling groggy behind the wheel): Stop. Drink a coffee. Then take a 20-minute nap. TL;DR Research shows that short naps (20-30 minutes) improve cognitive performance, decrease irritability and impulsiveness, and improve some types of memory. Doctors should take advantage of these benefits, especially if they frequently perform shift work. Source
