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What Do Nurses Need to Know to Enable Their Patients to Sleep Well in Hospital

Alison Hasselder

This article will discuss sleep and why it is so important for hospitalised patients. It will outline the consequences of sleep deprivation. Sleep is required to recover from illness yet hospitalised patients still complain of not always getting enough sleep. Using sleep promoting strategies and sleep assessment nurses can enable patients to potentially get a better night sleep whilst in hospital. Being hospitalised can leave patients finding it difficult to sleep with patients not being able to get a good enough night’s sleep whilst they are there. This article will discuss the care nurses should provide to help enable patients to sleep better whilst in hospital. Rather than focus on what sleep is. It will discuss why sleep is so important to all patients and what happens if patients are sleep deprived. It will also outline the reasons why patients may find it hard to sleep in hospital. Zhang et al (2013) argued that patients’ sleep is affected when they are hospitalized. Nesbitt and Goode (2014) believed that nurses sometimes lacked a complex understanding of the importance of sleep and the interventions required to promote it. This is serious; as nurses are the main carer for the patient twenty four hours a day and they should appreciate the need patients’ have for sleep and the benefits thereof. Nurses’ may evaluate that providing nursing and medical care holds a higher priority than preserving sleep quality of patients. Staff however, still writes things like “slept well” in the overnight report when in fact patients may have not slept well because of pain and the wakening for medication (Castledine 2010). This reinforces concerns about nurses’ focusing too little of their time assessing or inferring to improve patients' sleep. Sleep can be described as the unconscious state or condition frequently and naturally assumed by man and animals, through which the activity of the nervous system is almost or completely suspended, and recuperation of its powers takes place (Shier, Butler and Lewis 2018). Whereas, sleep deprivation occurs when an individual receives less sleep than they need to feel awake and alert (Bandyopadhyay and Sigua 2019). It is needed for a healthy life, and for survival (Engin et al 2010).