Quality of sleep and Factors Associated with Sleep Pattern Disturbance among Patients in Critical Care Units: Mixed Method study

Abstract Background Sleep disturbances are amongst one of the most common problems reported for critically ill patients admitted to ICU. Sleep disturbances have a negative impact on physiological parameters of the patients, which may delay their recovery, raise health care cost, and increases the length of hospital stay. Methods A mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) study was conducted with the use of a convergent parallel research design. The study was conducted in critical care units and 72 patients were included by the nested sampling technique. Two tools were used for data collection; a Modified Sleep disturbing scale and Semi-structured questionnaire with an in-depth interview on patient’s experiences regarding the quality of sleep. Result It showed that the most considerable factors which affect sleep were the pain (1.27 ± 0.61), the routine care before sleep (1.31 ± 1.03), alarms (1.29 ± 0.70) followed by lighting (1.15 ± 0.59). The environmental factors were found significantly associated with participants age. Further, marital status was found significantly associated with patient’s factors (0.002*), staff (0.009*), and environmental factors (0.001*). Whereas, exceptionally there was no remarkable association established between these factors and participant’s gender, education, or previous history of addiction to sedative or hypnotic drugs. Conclusion Sleep disturbance is a major problem identified among hospitalized patients. Majority of patients who experience disturbance in sleep pattern and quality of life is ascribed to pain, routine care, alarms and lighting. Education regarding different strategies could be considered as an important aspect for uninterrupted sleep pattern and also aids the patient to get better sleep.