Characterisation of sleep in intensive care using 24-hour polysomnography: an observational study.

This was a very enlightening discussion with Rosalind Elliott from Sydney about her study. Our poor ITU patients are struggling to get any decent sleep- what can we do to help them?

Rosalind Elliott qualified as a nurse in London, England in the early 90s and worked in intensive care for almost two decades. In 1998 she moved to Sydney. Roz completed her PhD studies with the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia in 2012. She conducted a research study, ‘Improving the quality and amount of sleep for the intensive care patient’. Previously during her Masters studies Roz investigated the effect of a sedation guideline on the duration of ventilation on intensive care patients. In addition to her strong research interest she is an advocate for nursing practices to improve patient comfort and quality of care. In her previous role as a Clinical Nurse Consultant in intensive care she published papers on the prevention of pressure ulcers and eye care in ICU patients.

The Insomnia Severity Index

Patient- Nurse Interrater Reliability and Agreement of the Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire American Journal of Critical Care 2012

Non-pharmacological interventions for sleep promotion in the intensive care unit

Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2015 Oct

It is well-known that patients in the intensive care units do suffer from a lack of sleep and frequent sleep disturbances.

This is a Cochrane review looking at the efficacy of nonpharmacological interventions for sleep promotion in the critically Ill adults in the intensive care units.

Perhaps one of the main results to come from this Cochrane review was the poor quality of the studies that they included. They initially included 30 trials, giving them a total of 1569 participants. However the quality was generally low or very low and as a consequence only three trials, those concerning earplugs or eye masks or both, provided data it suitable for two separate meta-analysis.

I would like in this podcast just to summarise some of the articles that they actually looked at when considering how to optimise the patient’s sleep in the intensive care unit and the various methods used.