Nigerian Postgraduate Medical Journal (Jan 2017)
Sleep quality among nurses in a tertiary hospital in North-West Nigeria
Abstract
Background: Sleep is a necessity; it is nourishing, refreshing and healing. The nursing profession is associated with busy and difficult work schedules, especially the running of shifts which has been associated with cardiovascular and metabolic complications. There is a dearth of local data on sleep disorders, especially among nurses. In this study, we evaluated the quality of sleep and the tendency of daytime sleepiness among nurses. Subjects and Methods: This study was cross-sectional in nature involving 100 nurses working with Federal Medical Centre Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State; the study was carried out between October 2016 and February 2017. The Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index was used to determine poor sleepers; while the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) was adopted to determine the presence of tendency of daytime sleepiness; 0–7 was considered normal, 8–9 represented average tendency of daytime sleepiness, 10–15 represented excessive daytime sleepiness, while 16–24 represented daytime sleepiness requiring medical intervention. P < 0.05 was set as statistically significant. Results: There were 23 (23%) males and 77 (77%) females, with a male-to-female ratio of 0.3:1. The age range was 18–50 years, with a mean age of 31.4 ± 8.6 years. The ESS score ranged from 0.0–17.0, with a mean score of 7.3 ± 3.5; while the Pittsburg score ranged between 1 and 15, with a mean score of 5.7 ± 2.7, and 61% of the nurses had a poor sleep quality. There was unlikely tendency of excessive sleepiness across all the age groups, though this was not statistically significant (χ2 = 7.258, P = 0.283), and poor sleep quality was most prevalent among the 25–40-year-old group but this observation was also not statistically significant (χ2 = 2.259, df = 2, P = 0.334). Conclusion: Poor sleep quality is a problem among nurses, though less tendency to daytime sleepiness was observed in this report.
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