Sleep Hygiene Intervention Plan for Young Adults Proposal

Introduction

A sleep hygiene intervention plan for young adults aged 20-40 years is suggested for nurses to be implemented in healthcare settings. The main goals of this plan are to develop a list of guidelines for nurses on how they can offer a kind of educational program to their patients based on which young adults can understand the worth of good sleep (Buysse, 2014), reboot their sleeping habits with the help of nurse pieces of advice, and identify the steps that can be appropriate for them. Several main steps have to be taken by the nurses in their practice. Nurses are suggested to:

1. Ask their patients (aged 20-40) about their sleep, the quality of sleep, and their personal opinions about the necessity to improve their sleep;
2. Clarify if their patients know something about sleep hygiene and the worth of a high-quality sleep in their lives;
3. Inform about the importance of food and napping before going to bed;
4. Provide patients with appropriate conditions that promote good sleep such as the absence of a TV before the bed or caffeine or nicotine before going to bed and an adequate light exposure; and
5. Underline and show different relaxing bedtime routines like pleasant talks, thoughts about the future, plans for weekends, etc.

Nurses have to create reports about the discussions with their patients and define the following points:

1. How many patients know about the importance of sleep;
2. How many patients are eager to try nurses’ suggestions; and
3. If there are some differences between the first days of in-patient treatment and the last days of patients’ presence in a hospital.

Potential Formative and Summative Approaches to the Evaluation

Formative approaches help to promote the development of interventions, and summative approaches focus on the effects of the chosen interventions (Gerrish & Lacey, 2013). In this intervention plan, the main formative approaches are the needs assessment and the implementation evaluation. First, it is necessary to understand who may need the program. Sleep problems and disturbance bother people a lot (Hellström, Fagerstrom, & Willman, 2011), and people between 20 and 40 are under a serious threat because they are independent enough to choose their styles of life and the conditions under which they can sleep, and they can create an environment for sleep regarding their needs and interests. Second, the way how the program can be implemented is integral because it helps to clarify if the delivery of the information is appropriate. Summative approaches such as goal-based evaluation and impact evaluation should help to clarify if nurses succeed in their activities. First, it is offered to clarify if the goals of the program are set clearly and if they are achieved. Then, it is necessary to investigate if the offered interventions help patients and change their emotional or physical conditions.

Details of the Evaluation Plan

The evaluation of the intervention should be organized in several stages. First, it is necessary to identify the tools that can be used. In this case, interviews with nurses and patients should be rather helpful. On the one hand, nurses can communicate with patients, clarify what people know about good sleep, and analyze if the knowledge of their patients about sleep hygiene is enough. Nurses can be a good instrument with the help of which the information from people between 20 and 40 years and their experience can be gathered. On the other hand, the patients, who are young adults between 20 and 40 years, are the main sources of information. They share their problems, introduce their interventions and achievements, and try new ideas offered by nurses.

The process of evaluation has several stages. First, it is necessary to gather the information. It means that a group of young adults should agree to participate in the program and follow the pieces of advice given by nurses. Nurses should be informed on how to cooperate with patients and provide them with information about sleep hygiene. Second, the choice of the environment should be appropriate. To achieve the best and most effective results with the interventions, patients should get a possibility to try the suggestions given by their nurses. Finally, the opinions of nurses and patients should be gathered in a form of a questionnaire with clearly identified answers.

The last stage of the evaluation plan is the analysis of data. It should be organized in a certain order. First, the results of the literature review help to introduce how many people suffer from a night of poor sleep and what interventions have been already offered to people. Second, the answers of nurses should be analyzed and presented in a table to clarify what people know about sleep hygiene and if they are ready to try new interventions. Finally, the opinions of patients have to be presented in a table. The answers of young adults between 20 and 40 years about the effectiveness of the interventions and the changes they can observe in their health should be calculated and divided. In general, the evaluation process should be organized in the way the following three aspects can be covered:

1. Nurses’ preparation for the interventions;
2. Patients’ readiness to recognize their sleep problems and use the interventions offered; and
3. Nurses and patients’ abilities to identify the outcomes and effects of the intervention.

References

Buysse, D. J. (2014). Sleep health: Can we define it? Does it matter. Sleep, 37(1), 9-17.

Gerrish, K. & Lacey, A. (2013). The research process in nursing. Aves, Iowa: John Wiley & Sons.

Hellström, A., Fagerstrom, C., & Willman, A. (2011). Promoting sleep by nursing interventions in health care settings: A systematic review. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 8(3), 128-142.