Abstract
The general goal of this review is to summarize, clarify, and evaluate what is known about patients' sleep in the intensive care units (ICUs) in terms of sleep measurement and management. In addition, this review focuses on the gap in knowledge in this field. A review of online databases for relevant articles in the period between 2000 and 2017 was conducted. The results of this study indicate that there are several methods to measure patients' quality of sleep. Polysomnography and actigraphy are the most common standard objective and valid methods used to measure sleep disorders in the ICU. On the contrary, several subjective instruments are used such as the Richards-Campbell Sleep Scale, Verran Snyder Harper Sleep Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Insomnia Severity Index, and Sleep Efficiency Index. To improve patients' sleep in the ICU, various strategies are used internationally. These strategies include reducing the noise and light levels; using relaxation technique, meditation, hypnosis, earplugs, eye masks, relaxation music; and modifying the time of delivering nursing care.