| dc.description.abstract | There is a research gap regarding college nursing student sleep habits and education compared to general college and medical students; nursing students are at high risk for poor sleep hygiene and impaired sleep quality due to coursework rigor, clinical hours, and balance between work (for majority) and college social life. There is a lack of sleep education and support in nursing students to allow for behavior change to occur amidst academic, employment, and social expectations. Nurse Practitioners (NPs) can play a vital role in health promotion to impact the nursing student population regarding sleep health. The practice improvement project (PIP) purpose was to evaluate, educate, and increase perceived sleep knowledge and habits of undergraduate nursing students at a Midwestern university. The PIP used descriptive statistics and open-ended questions for evaluation of sleep behaviors with nightly sleep logs pre- and post-education, Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Sleep Hygiene Practices Scale (SHPS) tools, and evaluation of an online sleep education module (SEM) to evaluate nursing student outcomes. Inclusion criteria included being a nursing student with admittance to the pre-licensure bachelor of science program. Of the 566 possible participants, 48 students completed the pre-survey and 21 students completed all evaluative measures. Collectively, results supported that nursing students had decreased sleep quality reflecting a mean pre-survey score of PSQI of 7.1 (a score greater than 5 indicates sleep difficulty) with a post-survey score improvement of 5.6. Pre-survey SHPS scores supported poorer sleep hygiene practices and sleep quality at 76.8, with improvement to scores of 75.2 post-survey. Due to the small sample size, sample bias, and a 56% attrition rate, no significant conclusions were able to be correlated. Eighty-six percent of participants indicated an increase in perceived knowledge after the SEM. Learning more about the patterns and barriers of sleep was important to make recommendations to support nursing student sleep health. The results of this study reflect other findings from college student populations, but more research should focus on nursing students to determine if needs are closer to medical students and how academic institutions and NPs could provide better support to promote sleep wellness. | en_US |
