Patient perception of environmental and nursing factors contributing to sleep disturbances in a neurosurgical intensive care unit

Uğraş, Gülay Altun

Many factors may affect sleep in the neurosurgery intensive care unit (NSICU), including therapeutic and diagnostic procedures, medications, the underlying disease process, and noise generated in NSICU. This study was aimed to determine the factors and nursing interventions, which affect the patients' sleep in NSICU, and to ascertain future descriptive research studies in nursing. The sample consisted of 84 voluntary patients hospitalized at a university hospital. They were consecutively asked to fill out a questionnaire in face-to-face interviews, and on the same day they were transferred out of the NSICU to a neurosurgical ward. Sixty-six patients (78.6%) experienced sleep disturbances. In those patients, being kept immobile (63.6%) and being in a noisy environment (57.6%) were the facto...