Can Drinking Caffeine Help You To Stay More Alert At School And Work?

With the increasing use of the 24 hour economy shift workers are becoming more and more. These workers are often more prone to making mistakes and having accidents, which are caused by the lengthy and irregular hours they have to work. All employers are required to make sure of the welfare of their employees which also includes assessing the hours and working conditions that are imposed on the workers.

Quite often health and safety procedures are introduced that look to address the problems caused by shift workers making mistakes. These procedures a good for ensuring that employees are safe but mistakes due to human error will more often occur when people are tired and not concentrating. Employers cannot take full responsibility for some of the mistakes so how can they look to improve the error rate and reduce the possibility of any problems occurring at work? New research is suggesting that perhaps caffeine can be used to keep employees alert and so help reduce error rates.

Caffeine has been used for years by workers to keep them alert but research carried out by the Cochrane Library wanted to test the specific affects on shift workers. A trial of 13 separate work forces aged between 20 and 30 was carried out to establish the effects of caffeine on performance. The caffeine was given to the workers through caffeine rich foods, energy drinks, pills and of course coffee.

Improved performance was seen with workers who were given caffeine. In tests such as attention, perception, memory reasoning and other neuropsychological test the shift workers were much better than others who had not received the caffeine boost. The test showed fewer mistakes were being made and so showed that perhaps accidents and errors could be reduced if caffeine products were consumed during work hours.

As with all studies of this type it is important to point out that these finding should not be taken out of context or worker should be all drinking coffee to make sure they do not have accidents. However a statement from the London School of Tropical Medicine suggested “It is reasonable to assume that reducing errors will also have an effect of reducing accidents but this would be hard to quantify” Katherine Ker suggested that accidents may be reduced by a greater intake of caffeine by employees.

It is important to remember that caffeine has been linked with a number of other medical conditions and so a balanced approach should be taken to ensure that the results can be used to good effect. This study was only performed on 20 to 30 year olds and perhaps this might not work so well for students taking part at online schools and older workers. however there are some benefits which could be taken from the research.

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