Abstract
The objective is to evaluate the sleep characteristics of the staff working in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). They were asked to complete an anonymous survey concerning the characteristics and quality of their sleep, as well as the impact of sleep disturbances on their work and social life, assessed by Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire (FOSQ)-10 questionnaire. The response rate was 84.6% (85% females): 17% were doctors, 57% nurses, 23% nursing assistants, and 3% porters. 83.8% of them worked on fix shifts and 16.2% did 24-h shifts. 39.8% of workers considered that they had a good sleep quality and 39.8% considered it to be poor or bad. The score was good in 18.2% of the staff and bad in 81.8%. Night shift workers showed significantly worse sleep quality on both the objective and subjective evaluation. There was a weak concordance (kappa 0.267; p = 0.004) between the perceived quality of sleep and the FOSQ-10 evaluation. Sleep disorders affected their emotional state (30.2% of workers) and relationships or social life (22.6%). In conclusion, this study finds that a high percentage of health professionals from PICU suffer from sleep disorders that affect their personal and social life. This negative impact is significantly higher in night shift workers. Many health workers are not aware of their bad sleep quality.
Highlights
Sleep is a basic human necessity and has many important biological functions
Considering the results of the Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire (FOSQ)-10 questionnaire, we identified some possible independent risk factors for bad quality of sleep: age, having children, having a stable partner, labor seniority, professional category, and work shift
Our results show that a very high percentage of pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) workers suffer from bad sleep quality
Summary
Sleep is a basic human necessity and has many important biological functions. It is regulated by the sleep–wake cycle [1, 2]. Multiple factors can affect sleep quality and the sleep–wake cycle: age, psychological problems, diseases, hormonal, environmental, sociocultural, or economic changes [3, 4]. People affected by an impaired sleep–wake cycle can experience physical and psychological disorders. The most prevalent are concentration problems, tiredness, daytime sleepiness, irritability and headache. Social and family life can be affected by sleep disorders [5, 6]
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