Compared with habitual sleep at home, sleep duration and quality were significantly worse for hospitalized patients, according to findings published in JAMA Internal Medicine, reports Healio.
The authors note that modifiable factors, such as introducing earplugs, can help to reduce sleep disturbances in hospitalized patients.
“Although inadequate sleep has a proven negative association with health care outcomes, to date, no large-scale studies have examined sleep in general hospital wards,” Hilde M. Wesselius, MD, from VU University Medical Center, the Netherlands, and colleagues wrote.
Wesselius and colleagues conducted a single-day observational study across 39 hospitals in the Netherlands to investigate the quantity and quality of sleep that patients receive in the hospital and the factors associated with sleep disturbances.
