Until the recent outbreak of bedbugs, I used to think that, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” referred to worries that could gnaw and keep you up at night. And fire chiefs certainly have enough worries to keep them awake.

Sleepless nights can be destructive. One night without sleep won’t hurt too much, but days or weeks without sound sleep can affect your physical and mental well-being.

As the fire service continues to emphasize the need for health and wellness, it’s important to ask yourself what’s keeping you from getting that good night’s sleep. Recently I asked chiefs and officers in the Executive Fire Officer Program just that, and I received a few surprising answers.

A battalion chief from an “aggressive and progressive fire department” replied that organizational drift keeps him awake. The constant supply of new equipment, new techniques and training methods has the department in a constant state of flux, and he was concerned that the methods are not consistent and the communication is not comprehensive across the department’s three shifts and several volunteer fire stations.

Can a department be too progressive or aggressive? What is the downside? Are your training programs consistent with what actually is happening at incident scenes? When you change a procedure or a response, how certain are you that it will be implemented correctly throughout the department?

Staffing and workload were two common concerns that kept respondents awake at night. “Folks are wearing five, six, seven different hats. …We just don’t have enough people or enough hours in the day to get everything done,” one participant wrote.

Another common worry was the increasing responsibility with each new bugle. One captain wrote that while nothing actually keeps her up at night, she worries during the day about her role as health-and-safety officer and her responsibility for more than 400 members.

A response that surprised me concerned tragedies involving children. An East Coast officer wrote that he could handle tragedies involving adults, but the ones involving children seemed to stick with him. He cited a case from 11 years earlier in which a 17-year-old girl died of respiratory arrest from an unknown cause. Tragedies certainly can stick with responders, and if they aren’t dealt with, they can lead to destructive behaviors, as Editor Glenn Bischoff writes in "Rescuing the Rescuers."

Another response that surprised me was from a chief who said unfamiliar and user-unfriendly computer software kept him up at night. This is a problem that seems fairly easy to resolve with training. But it made me wonder if we have become too dependent on computers. A simple electrical outage can raise concerns for the short term; imagine the havoc something as complicated as a cyber attack would cause.

One worry that didn’t surprise me, given the current economic and political climate, was increasing animosity from elected officials. You hear more and more of these problems every day, but fortunately, there also are multiple stories of very positive relationships between elected officials and fire chiefs, such as those told by Chief Mack Bochardt in Frisco, Texas, and Chief Jack McElfish in Sandy Springs, Ga. Surely they aren’t the exceptions, but rather two chiefs among many who enjoy good, working relationships with their local officials.

Maybe your stressors do not deter a good night’s sleep, but for many, a sleepless night gnawed by family, personal or work problems can affect the daytime. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best: “It appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbor’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.”

What keeps you awake at night?