What are Parkinson's disease patients' experiences of sleep as a hospital in-patient?
Citation
(2015) What are Parkinson's disease patients' experiences
of sleep as a hospital in-patient?, no. 61.
Abstract
Background
Parkinson's disease, second to Alzheimer's disease, is the most common neurodegenerative
disorder in Europe and the USA (Nussbaum and Ellis 2003). There is an estimated 6.3
million sufferers worldwide, 120,000 of these being in Britain (European Brain Council
2011).
The literature has highlighted that motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease have a higher
degree of recognition than the non-motor symptom, such as sleep disorders. However, the
studies examining them have highlighted the negative impact they have on the patient's
quality of life (Skogar et al 2012; Diederich and McIntyre 2012).There is also recognition in
the literature that sleep problems can be found in three population groups; Parkinson's
disease patients, older people and hospitalised patients (Walker, Hand, Cookey and Gray
2011; National Sleep Foundation (NSF) 2003; Pilkington 2013). Whilst studies examine
sleep disorders in Parkinson's patients, there are none that can be found that look into the
experience of sleep of Parkinson's patients admitted to hospital.
Aims
This study proposes to explore the experiences of Parkinson's patients of sleep during a
hospital admission in the last 6 months, determine if there were any enhancements made to
the care they received from nurses that positively impacted upon their sleep and determine
any further training or education needs of nurses to improve patient care.
Methods
This would be a qualitative descriptive explorative study and purposive sampling would be
employed. Semi-structured interviews would then be conducted in the