Inpatient Sleep Loss: Educating and Empowering Patients

Mentoring Patient-Oriented Research: Sleep & Health During & After Hospital Stay

While many interventions have targeted hospital staff to improve sleep, few have been successful, and often suffer from limited adherence to staff protocols. Given preliminary data that suggests that empowered patients are more likely to obtain better sleep and have objectively lower noise levels in their rooms, it is plausible that partnering directly with patients can mitigate sleep loss and improve health outcomes. Patients will be randomized to receive the I-SLEEP education and empowerment program and test the effectiveness of this program on patient sleep and health outcome in the hospital and post-discharge. The aim of the project is to reduce environmental, healthcare-related, and patient-related factors that disrupt sleep of hospitalized patients by use of patient education and empowerment intervention.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Admitted to the general/hospitalist medicine departments
• Stayed at least one night in hospital since admission

Exclusion Criteria:

• Admitted >72 hours ago
• Patient has been diagnosed with a sleep disorder such as narcolepsy, insomnia, or sleep apnea
• Patient was transferred from ICU or outside hospital
• Patient under strict, droplet, or airborne isolation precautions
• Unable to ambulate
• Too confused or incoherent to provide consent
• Patient cannot speak English
• Pregnancy
• Residence in a nursing home or assisted living facility
• Patient was admitted in a hospital within two weeks of current admission