Still too noisy - An audit of sleep quality in trauma and orthopaedic patients

An adequate amount of sleep is fundamental to health and well-being, especially for individuals recovering from an illness or injury. Trauma patients sustain musculoskeletal and tissue injuries and require a sufficient amount of sleep to promote recovery. However, it is known that patients can face difficulties sleeping in hospitals which impacts on their recovery.

To determine the quality of sleep, influence of sleep quality and the impact of sleep quality on recovery in trauma and orthopaedic patients.

An exploratory descriptive design was applied using a clinical audit. As no standardised sleep assessment tool was identified, a sleep audit tool was developed.

A total of 40 patients were recruited from two trauma and orthopaedic wards from a London Hospital in the United Kingdom. Of these 17 patients (43%) rated the quality of sleep as 'poor' and nearly half (n = 19, 46%) reported that the quality of their night-time sleep had affected their recovery. Two-thirds of patients reported noise was the main factor that disrupted their sleep, making it the highest contributing sleep disruptor (n = 26, 65%).

A significant association between poor quality of sleep and patient recovery was identified in this small sample of trauma and orthopaedic patients. The findings suggest that nurses should try to create a suitable sleeping environment to enhance patient recovery. There is a need for a standardised sleep assessment tool and sleep audit tool so that the quality of patients' sleep can be accurately assessed and documented.