What are Parkinson's disease patients' experiences of sleep as a hospital in-patient?

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