EFFECTS OF CRITICAL CARE UNIT NOISE ON THE SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF SLEEP

Nurse researchers have provided evidence that hospital critical care u nit (CCU) noise may put patients at risk for sleep problems. Technolog ical advances in this setting have been described as contributing to t his problem. Although data on the negative effects of CCU noise on phy siological sleep are available, less attention has been given to self- reports of the subjective quality of sleep following exposure to this stressor. This study hypothesized that subjects exposed to CCU sound l evels would report poorer subjective sleep than subjects in a quieter environment. Sixty female subjects, attempting to sleep overnight in a laboratory, were randomly assigned to an experimental group, where th ey heard an audiotape recording of CCU sounds throughout the night, or to a quiet group where the audiotape recording of CCU sounds was with held. A self-rating questionnaire was used to assess subjective sleep, The noise condition subjects reported taking longer to fall asleep, l ess time sleeping, more awakenings, poorer quality of sleep compared t o home, as well as fewer positive and more negative adjectives descrip tive of sleep. Self-reports of the time spent sleeping and the number of negative adjectives descriptive of sleep yielded the greatest numbe r of significant correlations with scores for the other measures of sl eep, indicating that these measures may be more accurate. Data on the quality of dreams yielded no difference between groups. The results pr ovide support for the hypothesis that CCU sound levels impact negative ly on subjective sleep. It was recommended, now that CCU sound levels were isolated in the laboratory as a potential stressor, that future r esearch should attempt to replicate this study in a hospital CCU.