Poster abstracts – 1st Global Conference on Emergency Nursing & Trauma Care: Dublin, Ireland, 18–21 September 2014

Abstract

Human being spends around one third of life in sleep, so normal sleep characteristics and its disorders have been the focus of attention of many scientists and physicians since long ago. The historical art works and scientific documents about sleep are the proof of this reality. However, modern sleep medicine with its own diagnostic procedures, therapeutic strategies, and sleep monitoring techniques is a new branch of medicine that has been introduced to the world not more than half a decade ago, primarily in the second half of the 20th century.Physicians and scientists in any branch of medicine have encountered challenges and obstacles while taking their primary steps. It is not surprising that we, as sleep specialists and scientists, may encounter many problems during the process of developing this new branch of medicine in our country. Although these problems differ in many aspects among various countries, there are some similarities.Since the development of sleep medicine, many professional sleep societies have evolved, many exclusive sleep journals have been published, guideline for accreditation of centers have been developed and also formalized fellowship training programs in medical universities all over the world have been established. Such developments have been helpful in reaching some milestones in overcoming some obstacles and challenges, although there is still a long way to reach the peak. Sharing the information regarding the situation of sleep medicine practice and training as well as challenges that each of us face in our daily practice and research can help us continue to improve global sleep health.While writing this chapter we connected to the major sleep scientists and physicians all over the world and asked for sharing their knowledge of development of sleep medicine in their countries. We discovered extremely valuable resources of what is going on in the practice of sleep medicine each country. In this chapter we will discuss the topic of sleep medicine in a couple of countries including China, Iran, South Korea, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt, Armenia, Turkey, Nigeria and Morroco. For each country, we will first give some general information about the countries, their health care systems, sleep medicine practices, training, fellowship programs, and sleep medicine societies. Finally, we will discuss the costs of practicing sleep medicine and go through the challenges of practicing in this new field of medicine in each country.