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I’ve worked on a human performance assessment program for nearly 10 years. We induce stressors cross the spectrum to better inoculate volunteer candidates from

I’ve worked on a human performance assessment program for nearly 10 years. We induce stressors cross the spectrum to better inoculate volunteer candidates from stress and enhance their resiliency. They are often suffering from sleep deprivation/deficit. We have very robust safety procedures in place. After observing hundreds of volunteer candidates in depth over nearly a decade, I would say that sleep deprivation/deficit is an exceptionally and deceptively dangerous problem. Akin to carbon monoxide poisoning in a way. Members of the military and first responders may need to operate for extended periods with little to no sleep/rest. And that includes physicians in training for things like mass casualty scenarios. So it IS worthwhile to possess “reference points” of personal adversity to manage decision making while stressed. But to LIVE a sleep deprived life of a physician resident is nothing short of madness and a recipe for failure. I’ve been under Assessment. And it certainly feels like it ages you prematurely. And anecdotally, it appears to do so to many of our candidates. Temporarily. I’ve had my telomeres measured a few times. Fortunately, active effort to target 7+ hours of daily consistent sleep, fitness, nutrition, and other choices seem to play a factor in outlier telomere length. Or I’m just lucky. Just because we have always done it this way with residents, doesn’t mean we should.

Havoc 7y ago
>We induce stressors cross the spectrum to better inoculate volunteer candidates from stress and enhance their resiliency. Oh god. That gives me flashbacks to university. They gave us this super messed up exam schedule - writing majority of waking hours & not knowing what class/course/topic you're walking into. Asked the profs WTF is up with the cruel exam plan and that was that exact answer: The professional exam (country's CPA equivalent) is structured like this so yeah we structured your exams to intentionally & artificially create stress. Dry run for that level of unreasonable pressure. Never occurred to me that my uni profs might be out to intentionally stress me before that comment. Speaking of residents - that's a key thing that gets me through all that stuff. Reminding myself that I'm not a surgeon...nobody dies if I screw up. I can do crazy stress, long hours, little sleep like a boss but 99% sure I could not emotionally do that if my steady hand determines whether someone lives. The people that can - happy concede that they are a better man than I am.
- saulrh 7y ago
  > The professional exam (country's CPA equivalent) is structured like this so yeah we structured your exams to intentionally & artificially create stress. Even on second and third thought this seems insane. I can understand doing it on something that turns out to be relatively inconsequential as a learning experience, but doing it for people's PEs and final exams? That sounds like a great way to overwhelm every possible feature related to engineering quality in favor of "how well do they survive an unrealistically horrible stress-test". Because, like you said, nobody dies if you screw up. Being able to handle acute stress is not that useful for a civil engineer or similar. Teaching people to handle chronic stress? Maybe, but the research I see says that there is no way to deal with chronic stress and even attempting it damages you, potentially permanently. Acute stress, nope.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    >this seems insane A little bit. Big part of the issue was that the professional exam results were published by originating university. So there was this really perverse incentive for universities to send only the most battle hardened candidates into the process to kept the very public stats on the uni's performance on these independent professional exams high. And if you think that's wild - it gets better. This being HN: Some enterprising genius looked at this entire process and decided he's going to set up a recruitment company that does nothing other than exporting survivors of above process. Literally park them anywhere globally - nothing really matters & nobody cares where cause clearly these guys can cope and collecting a juicy placement fee is easy money. One of the best/safest business models I've ever seen - leverages a beautifully subtle anomaly in the global labour market that isn't immediately obvious to outsiders. >Being able to handle acute stress is not that useful for a civil engineer or similar. Alas in my particular world (Accounting/auditing) it is. 3 months of soul crushing stress and rest of year is more relaxed. Rinse & repeat. >Teaching people to handle chronic stress? That's one saving grace I guess. I find that 3 months of intense stress is bearable. Or rather it's about the limit of my endurance. Certainly not healthy - talking about this purely practically.
    - saulrh 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago

>We induce stressors cross the spectrum to better inoculate volunteer candidates from stress and enhance their resiliency. Oh god. That gives me flashbacks to university. They gave us this super messed up exam schedule - writing majority of waking hours & not knowing what class/course/topic you're walking into. Asked the profs WTF is up with the cruel exam plan and that was that exact answer: The professional exam (country's CPA equivalent) is structured like this so yeah we structured your exams to intentionally & artificially create stress. Dry run for that level of unreasonable pressure. Never occurred to me that my uni profs might be out to intentionally stress me before that comment. Speaking of residents - that's a key thing that gets me through all that stuff. Reminding myself that I'm not a surgeon...nobody dies if I screw up. I can do crazy stress, long hours, little sleep like a boss but 99% sure I could not emotionally do that if my steady hand determines whether someone lives. The people that can - happy concede that they are a better man than I am.

saulrh 7y ago
> The professional exam (country's CPA equivalent) is structured like this so yeah we structured your exams to intentionally & artificially create stress. Even on second and third thought this seems insane. I can understand doing it on something that turns out to be relatively inconsequential as a learning experience, but doing it for people's PEs and final exams? That sounds like a great way to overwhelm every possible feature related to engineering quality in favor of "how well do they survive an unrealistically horrible stress-test". Because, like you said, nobody dies if you screw up. Being able to handle acute stress is not that useful for a civil engineer or similar. Teaching people to handle chronic stress? Maybe, but the research I see says that there is no way to deal with chronic stress and even attempting it damages you, potentially permanently. Acute stress, nope.
- Havoc 7y ago
  >this seems insane A little bit. Big part of the issue was that the professional exam results were published by originating university. So there was this really perverse incentive for universities to send only the most battle hardened candidates into the process to kept the very public stats on the uni's performance on these independent professional exams high. And if you think that's wild - it gets better. This being HN: Some enterprising genius looked at this entire process and decided he's going to set up a recruitment company that does nothing other than exporting survivors of above process. Literally park them anywhere globally - nothing really matters & nobody cares where cause clearly these guys can cope and collecting a juicy placement fee is easy money. One of the best/safest business models I've ever seen - leverages a beautifully subtle anomaly in the global labour market that isn't immediately obvious to outsiders. >Being able to handle acute stress is not that useful for a civil engineer or similar. Alas in my particular world (Accounting/auditing) it is. 3 months of soul crushing stress and rest of year is more relaxed. Rinse & repeat. >Teaching people to handle chronic stress? That's one saving grace I guess. I find that 3 months of intense stress is bearable. Or rather it's about the limit of my endurance. Certainly not healthy - talking about this purely practically.
  - saulrh 7y ago