DEVELOPING A SLEEP ENHANCING BED TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF INPATIENTS SLEEP IN HOSPITALS

DEVELOPING A SLEEP ENHANCING BED TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF INPATIENTS SLEEP IN HOSPITALS

Introduction

Sleep in an essential aspect of all mankind’s well being. The proper functionality of an individual’s system depends on the quality of sleep they have during the night. For this reason, individuals are expected to develop sleep hygiene to help them have a quality sleep during the night and full alertness during the day. However, there are some individuals who cannot develop proper sleep hygiene due to some circumstances like job commitments or interferences from their environments and some medical conditions. Individuals suffering from insomnia normally have to keep their lights on for them to get quality sleep. The individuals sharing bedrooms with insomnia patients always experience low quality sleep. These are individuals who feel uncomfortable to sleep with lights on. This kind of inconveniency also occurs in publicly shared social amenities like hospitals. In a significant number of hospital setting, the lights always stay on throughout the night. Such is always considered as a safety precaution for the patients and also helps in facilitating service delivery (De Zeeuw and Canto, 2020, p 107165). In a nutshell, the existing demands in a hospital setting do not allow the lights to be turned off, which significantly interferes with some of the patient’s quality of sleep. At the same time, individual patients may sometimes be feeling to sleep during the day to help them recover their physical strength. However, they may not be able to acquire quality sleep due to the penetration of light from the sun and the noise from their surroundings. This project is set to address this by designing a sleep-enhancing bed that will allow the self-isolation of individual patients when they need to sleep with total control of the bed rendered to the medical staff.

Background information

The emergence of electronic devices in the contemporary world deprives a significant population of the world quality sleep. An individual’s interaction with these electronic devices delays their circadian rhythm and suppresses the release of the sleep-inducing hormone known as melatonin. Studies have shown that close to 90% of the United States population uses electronic gadgets one hour before they get to sleep (Honn et al., 2019, p 194). Such demonstrate how the majority of the country’s population is deprived of quality sleep considering the lights that these gadgets always have.

There are always noticeable signs of sleep deprivation; these include yawning, irritability, daytime fatigue, and excessive sleepiness. At the same time, individuals risk several health problems as a result of a lack of sleep. First, lack of quality sleep interferes with an individual’s nervous system in which the brain is left exhausted and cannot perform its duties as expected. Through this, they may experience a delay of information relay in their nervous system, which reduces their concentration levels and increases their risks of being involved in accidents. Secondly, it is through quality sleep that the body has time to produce effective and infection-fighting substances like cytokines (Williams and Anderson, 2017 1682). Such substances increase the defensive mechanism of the body, and lack of sleep can lower their production within the body, thereby exposing an individual to infections and other disease-causing organisms.

Thirdly, Sleep affects the levels of two hormones, leptin, and ghrelin, which control feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin always tells an individual that they have had enough to eat; without enough and quality sleep, the brain will reduce the production of leptin and increases ghrelin, which is an appetite stimulant, thereby interfering with an individual’s digestive system (Papagiannakopoulos et al., 2016 p 327). Additionally, the endocrine system also depends on sleep for effective and efficient hormone production. Interaction of quality of sleep can hamper growth hormone production among adolescents and children.  All these are ways in which a lack of enough sleep can affect an individuals wellbeing. The results of these can be worse among patients in hospitals if there need for quality sleep is not addressed. It is evident from the above information that quality of sleep can be a factor that aids the deterioration of health among inpatients in hospitals.

How light interferes with an individual’s sleep

Exposure to lights during night hours when the body is supposed to be resting disrupts an individual’s circadian rhythm. An individual’s circadian rhythm causes an individual to feel more alert or sleepy, depending on the time of the day. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioural changes that follow a daily cycle. The circadian rhythm is produced by natural factors like the day and night. However, the sleep environment also controls it and can affect its proper functioning. Circadian rhythms help determine our sleep patterns. The body’s master clock controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. It receives information about incoming light from the optic nerves, which relay information from the eyes to the brain (Potter et al., 2016 594). At the same time, exposure to light delays the release of melatonin hormone, which is a sleep-enhancing hormone. It is always being released more in the evening than during the day keep the body awake during the day and help it to sleep during the night.

Technology powered multi-purpose sleep enhancing bed

General Product design

Automatic blinds

Temperature

Centered to enhancing body parts comfort

Experience mapping (for patients in hospitals)

The actual need for quality sleep among patients in a hospital can best be understood and met if all parties involved in managing patients develop a common understanding on how to address the problem. However, like any other work setup, hospitals entail diverse categories of people with different backgrounds, behaviours, and experiences which might hamper collective approach to decision making. Mapping, which concerns building visualizations, provides a basis for creating a better understanding of a new product or service as well as processes and aspects associated with it. Generally, there are four types of mapping consisting of empathy mapping customer journey mapping, experience mapping, and service blueprint. The selection of the mapping approach to use in visualizing a product or service depends on its relevance in illuminating the holistic customer experience about a product or service. Experience map has been selected in assessing a patient’s experience with the sleep-enhancing bed.

An experience map is a critical tool in representing customers’ or users’ experience as they interact with a specific product or service. At the core of the mapping, approach is the assessment of a customer’s journey with a product or a service with the goal of establishing their feelings and responses as a basis for unlocking a more compelling and beneficial holistic experience. It is useful in recording customers’ behaviours as they interact with a specific product or service. The mapping approach is not tied to a specific product and assesses the general human perspective and depicts events of experience in chronological order. Effective use of the experience map in evaluating the sleep-enhancing beds would fruit into better knowledge across teams and stakeholders necessary for improving the product for a seamless experience.

The following experience map shows actions and expected outcomes in addition to the approaches to establishing experiences. It is suggested that the best way to effectively implement the sleep-enhancing bed program is through piloting. In this case, few beds should be installed in a specific section of the hospital of which the primary care unit has been selected. The care unit will act as the experiment section and other units as control sections. The installation of the pilot beds is to be followed with various approaches for monitoring experiences such as physical, behavioural, and mental changes. Various approaches such as electroencephalography (EEG), Electromyography (EMG), and Electro-oculography are critical in assessing the sleep levels. It is expected that deep sleep will be characterized by improved leptin, ghrelin, and hormone levels, more relaxed muscles, and rapid eye movements which signify deep sleep.

The attainment of the expectations should be followed by the active implementation of the program with more sleep-enhancing beds being installed in the primary care section. Continuous assessment and evaluation of patients’ behavioural, mental, and physical changes are critical in confirming whether the product meets improvement needs. The regular survey should reveal improved sleep levels and quality. Consistent positive results set the pace for installing the beds in other units of the hospital. The long-term outcomes of the beds entail high levels of comfortability, relaxation, support, and most importantly, sleep quality. The physical experience summarizes major expected outcomes.

References

Bradley, A.J., Webb-Mitchell, R., Hazu, A., Slat; er, N., Middleton, B., Gallagher, P., McAllister-Williams, H., and Anderson, K.N., 2017. Sleep and circadian rhythm disturbance in bipolar disorder. Psychological medicine, 47(9), pp.1678-1689. Available at: <https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/232492/C90F285C-A411-443C-A259-7CFFE39B58CE.pdf>

De Zeeuw, C.I., and Canto, C.B., 2020. Sleep deprivation directly following eyeblink-conditioning impairs memory consolidation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, p.107165. available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074742720300095>

Honn, K.A., Hinson, J.M., Whitney, P., and Van Dongen, H.P.A., 2019. Cognitive flexibility: A distinct element of performance impairment due to sleep deprivation. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 126, pp.191-197. Available at: <https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/531/2018/10/honn2018.pdf>

Papagiannakopoulos, T., Bauer, M.R., Davidson, S.M., Heimann, M., Subbaraj, L., Bhutkar, A., Bartlebaugh, J., Vander Heiden, M.G. and Jacks, T., 2016. Circadian rhythm disruption promotes lung tumorigenesis. Cell metabolism, 24(2), pp.324-331. Available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413116303126>

Potter, G.D., Skene, D.J., Arendt, J., Cade, J.E., Grant, P.J., and Hardie, L.J., 2016. Circadian rhythm and sleep disruption: causes, metabolic consequences, and countermeasures. Endocrine Reviews, 37(6), pp.584-608. Available at: <https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/37/6/584/2691715?dom=prime&src=syn>