Mental Fatigue and Its Effect on the Performance of the Faculty of Health Staff Using Electroencephalographic Signals

Background and Objective: Mental fatigue usually occurrs as a result of long-term cognitive activities. Mental fatigue could have important effects on the daily lives of healthy people. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to estimate mental fatigue and its impact on staff performance. Materials and Methods: This descriptive analytic study was performed on 10 staff with a mean age of 36±6.19 years. To evaluate the performance of the participants, they were asked to read a text with spelling errors and then correct them. This test was performed in 5 steps of 15 min during which electroencephalography (EEG) was performed. At each step, the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) was completed by the staff. The data were analyzed statistically by the repeated measures ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: According to the results, the brain waves decreased during the experiment, which was indicative of increased mental fatigue. The EEG was recorded as 213.14±59.98 and 77.68±21.68 in the first and last 15 min, respectively. In addition, the participants were reported their fatigue by KSS, based on which the performance of the participants was shown to decrease from 27.3±4.53 to 17.5±5.19. Conclusion: The EEG facilitates the investigation of mental fatigue over different periods of time. As the results indicated, mental fatigue caused by long-term cognitive activities could result in the reduction of the accuracy, focus, and consciousness of the staff. Finally, increased mental fatigue led to the recution of the quality of individuals’ performance.