A nurse-driven inpatient sleep protocol raised Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems nighttime quietness scores 8.47% and reduced sitter hours by 896 over seven months, according to a study published June 23 in Cureus.
Researchers at UC San Diego Health and UC San Diego School of Medicine enrolled 92 medical-surgical inpatients across three sequential cohorts: standard care, a nurse-only intervention and a combined nurse-physician intervention.
The nurse-led protocol paired nightly sleep rounds with a personalized sleep hygiene menu covering environmental adjustments, comfort measures and relaxation aids. Hospitalists in the combined cohort additionally modified overnight order sets to limit nonurgent vital sign checks, lab draws and medication administrations during a protected sleep window from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The experiment yielded more than $21,000 in cost savings over that seven-month period, according to the study.
Both intervention groups significantly outperformed controls across all sleep quality metrics — depth, onset time, overnight awakenings and return to sleep — with no statistically meaningful difference between the two intervention arms.
The authors concluded that physician order modifications provided no incremental benefit beyond nursing-led protocols alone, positioning inpatient sleep hygiene as a high-value, nurse-driven lever for patient experience scores and unit-level cost reduction on medical-surgical floors.
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