Purpose
During hospitalization, sleep can be disturbed and the quality reduced. This study investigated the effect of applying white noise on hospitalized patients for improving their sleep quality. Methods: In a randomized controlled trial design, participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n=30) or a comparison group (n=31), enrolled from rehabilitation medicine wards at a university hospital in South Korea. For three days of the intervention, the experimental group listened to white noise for one hour before sleep. The comparison group wore only earplugs before sleep. Sleep quality was assessed by the Verran and Snyder-Halpern (VSH) sleep scale as a subjective measure and the Fitbit ^® wrist band monitor as an objective measure. Data were collected pre- and three days post-intervention. Data were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA using SPSS/WIN 22.0 program. Results: The white noise group showed positive effects on subjective sleep quality (p<.001) compared to the earplug group. Among the objective sleep quality measures, sleep time (p<.001) and sleep efficiency (p=.003) were statistically significant, but there were no statistically significant differences in time of awakening, number of awakening, time of restless and number of restless. Conclusion: Findings indicate that applying white noise could be considered as a useful nursing intervention to improve subjective and objective sleep quality in hospitalized patients.

Citations

• A randomized controlled trial on the effect of music and white noise listening on anxiety and vital signs during intramuscular injection skill learning
  Berna Aksoy, Levent Ozturk
  Teaching and Learning in Nursing.2024; 19(1): e52.     CrossRef
• Effect of dynamic binaural beats on sleep quality: a proof-of-concept study with questionnaire and biosignals
  Hwa-Ah-Ni Lee, Woo-Jin Lee, Seong-Uk Kim, Hyunji Kim, Minkyu Ahn, Jeonghui Kim, Do-Won Kim, Chang-Ho Yun, Han-Jeong Hwang
  SLEEP.2024;[Epub]     CrossRef
• Preoperative Anxiety and Its Postoperative Associated Factors in Patients Receiving Post Anesthetic Recovery Care at Surgical Intensive Care Unit
  Yul Ha Lee, Hye-Ja Park
  Journal of Health Informatics and Statistics.2023; 48(3): 267.     CrossRef
• External Auditory Stimulation as a Non-Pharmacological Sleep Aid
  Heenam Yoon, Hyun Jae Baek
  Sensors.2022; 22(3): 1264.     CrossRef