Implementation of Evidence-Based Nursing Guidelines and Sleep Quality in Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome

Sleep disorder is a common problem in patients hospitalized in cardiac care unit (CCU) and it may lead to irreversible consequences. Evaluating sleep quality is an important indicator in care quality. A new method to improve quality of nurses’ clinical practice is implementation of evidence-based nursing guidelines.
This study aimed to evaluate the effect of implementation of evidence-based nursing guidelines on quality of sleep in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) admitted to the coronary care unit.
Patients and This before and after clinical trial was performed in Hazrat Fatima (sa) hospital in Kerman city, Iran, during 2012 - 2013. Interventions included training evidence-based nursing guidelines to nurses working in CCU and the implementation of these guidelines. Sampling was done through the convenience nonprobability method and 45 patients were placed in the before group and 45 in the after group. Patients’ quality of sleep was evaluated using the Pittsburgh sleep quality standardized questionnaire before and after the interventions and data were analyzed using SPSS software version 19, mean descriptive statistics, standard deviation statistics, inferential statistics, an independent t-test and chi-square test
The total mean score of adequate sleep was 6.71 (3.54) in the intervention group and 5.26 (2.58) in the control group. The difference was statistically significant (P = 0.03).
Implementation of evidence-based nursing guidelines improved the quality of sleep; therefore, it is recommended to administrators and managers of hospitals and health education centers to consider educating evidence-based nursing guidelines in their agenda.