HSJ guide: Do hospitals need to get more serious about sleep?

Summary

Making hospitals more conducive to high quality sleep might benefit patient experience and wellbeing, and could perhaps even lead to reduced length of stay.

Sleep is known to be closely connected to physical and mental health, and yet hospital environments are far from conducive to high quality rest. Noise, light, disturbances for treatment or tests, other patients, staff noise and temperature can all reduce the odds of a good night’s sleep. Overnight observations can also be extremely disruptive.

At some trusts, efforts are being made to address this situation. The ultimate aim? Not only to improve the patient experience, but to potentially the speed with which they heal–so reducing the likes of length of stay. Others, meanwhile, are exploring whether supporting better sleep could even reduce the need for hospital admission in the first place.

Content

This HSJ guide covers:

• The case for better sleep.
• Getting sleep right – experiences from hospitals.
• Does overnight observations practice need to change?
• Measuring the extend of the problem – and the impact of interventions.
• The potential role of technology in better management of inpatient sleep.