FOSTERING A HEALTHIER SLEEP ENVIRONMENT IN YOUR HOSPITAL
If you’ve ever tried to sleep in a hospital, you know that it doesn’t make for an ideal sleeping environment. The normal comforts of home are absent, monitors may be uncomfortable or intrusive, and you might be woken up throughout the night. However, sleep is too precious to waste for many children in hospitals— sleep has varying levels of impact on many different health outcomes, and lack of it can be disastrous. Let’s take a look at some of the things sleep can do for kids:
Sleep can reduce length-of-stay
Wound and burn recovery time is improved with an adequate amount of sleep
Sleep improves immune system response and reduces risk of hospital-acquired illness
So, why aren’t hospitalized children getting enough sleep?
This is a multifaceted problem, but a possible underlying cause might be lack of adequate tools to facilitate sleep in kids who don’t feel well. Pain makes it more difficult to sleep, but pain medications can be disruptive and disorienting. Children with medically-induced anxiety and trauma can sometimes require sedatives in order to rest, but the same sedatives can wreak havoc on delicate circadian rhythms. Hospital floors are notoriously loud and busy, and care interventions may interrupt what little sleep patients can get.
What’s the solution?
There is no single solution to solve the sleep issue, but there are lots of steps you can take to make your hospital more sleep-friendly. Here are a few of our favorites:
Start a noise-reduction project at your hospital. Besides the increased sleep and patient satisfaction, hospital staff appreciate a quieter floor as well!
Launch a mobility initiative! Every parent can attest that kids sleep better after doing movement, and research backs it up. Check out how our friends at Mott Children’s Hospital incorporate different levels of activity (including the ARISE scavenger hunt) into a comprehensive mobility program.
Use technology wisely. Games and apps that encourage active participation can be a great tool to normalize schedules during the daytime, but use should be limited to daylight hours to avoid unnecessary blue light exposure. If the soothing benefits of the technology outweigh the light exposure, consider purchasing tinted glasses to filter out the blue light.
Re-examine sedation guidelines and experiment with different pharmacological agents to reduce sleep-detrimental effects.
To learn more about how technology can support inpatient recovery, register for our upcoming webinar on inpatient mobility initiatives!
