Nonpharmacologic sleep promotion: bright light exposure

This paper presents findings on utilizing bright light to entrain the sleep-wake cycle in order to improve the perceived quality of sleep.The feasibility of including bright light as one of the nonpharmacologic nursing interventions for sleep promotion is discussed. A decade ago, nurses relied on sleeping pills to solve patients' sleep problems (Halfens et al. 1991). Reported obstacles to the development of sleep management tools included insufficient knowledge of sleep (Edéll-Gustafasson et al. 1994) and unfamiliarity with effective nursing methods for tackling sleep problems (Halfens et al. 1991). Ten years later, nurses took the initiative in sleep promotion activities. In their book, Morgan and Closs (1999) introduced several sleep management methods in nursing practice. Floyd et al. (2000) summarized that 12 nonpharmacologic interventions used by nurses in the past to promote sleep. These 12 interventions are categorized according to their mechanism of action as relaxation, noise management, circadian repatterning and sleep hygiene. Light is thought to regulate the circadian system (Dawson & Van den Heuvel 1998) as a major synchronizer of endogenous circadian cycles (Dijk et al. 1995).