Patient room lighting influences on sleep, appraisal and mood in hospitalized people

Nov 19, 2016Journal of sleep research

How Patient Room Lighting Affects Sleep, Mood, and Thinking in Hospitalized People

AI simplified

Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Abstract

Patients in interventional lighting rooms experienced an improvement in sleep duration by 29 minutes after 5 days of hospitalization.

A controlled clinical trial involved 196 cardiology ward patients with an average age of 66.5 years.
Subjective measures of sleep, alertness, anxiety, and depression showed no significant differences between standard and interventional lighting.
Patients and staff rated the lighting in intervention rooms more favorably than in standardly-lit rooms.
Actigraphic data indicated an increase in sleep duration by 5.9 minutes per day with the interventional lighting.
The interventional lighting system featured a dynamic 24 h light/dark cycle with reduced nocturnal light exposure.

AI simplified

Irregular 24 h light/dark cycles with night-time light exposure and a low amplitude are disruptive for sleep, mood and circadian rhythms. Nevertheless such lighting conditions are quite common in medical care facilities. A controlled clinical trial among 196 cardiology ward patients (mean age 66.5 ± 13.1 years SD) investigated how a patient room lighting intervention affects sleep, appraisal and mood across hospitalization. Patients were either assigned to a standardly-lit room or to a room with an interventional lighting system offering a dynamic 24 h light/dark cycle with low nocturnal light exposure and 2 h of bright light (1750 lux) during daytime. Measures included wrist actigraphy and questionnaires assessing alertness, sleep quality, anxiety, depression and lighting appraisal. The median length of hospitalization was 5 days in both study arms. Subjective scores on sleep, alertness, anxiety and depression did not differ between arms. Lighting appraisal in intervention rooms was better as compared to standardly-lit rooms, both in patients (P < 0.001) and staff (P < 0.005). Actigraphic sleep duration of patients improved by 5.9 min (95% CI: 0.6-11.2; P = 0.03 intervention × time effect) per hospitalization day with interventional lighting instead of standard lighting. After 5 days of hospitalization, sleep duration in the lighting intervention rooms increased by 29 min, or a relative 7.3%, as compared to standardly-lit rooms. A 24 h lighting system with enhanced daytime brightness and restricted nocturnal light exposure can improve some aspects of appraisal and objective sleep in hospital patients. More clinical research is needed to establish the best lighting strategy to promote healing and wellbeing within healthcare settings.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (PDF) ↗View full text ↗

Patient room lighting influences on sleep, appraisal and mood in hospitalized people

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief