The relationship between environmental stressors, sleep quality and delirium perceived by intensive care unit patients

This study was planned as a descriptive study to examine the relationship between environmental stressors perceived by patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit and sleep quality and delirium. The study was conducted with 120 patients hospitalized in the Intensive Care Units of Hatay Dörtyol State Hospital between December 2023 and May 2024. Ethics committee approval, institutional permission and verbal and written informed consent were obtained from the patients participating in the study. Data were collected using the Patient Information Form, Intensive Care Environmental Stressors Scale, Richard-Campbell Sleep Scale and Delirium Screening Scale. Data were evaluated with SPSS (version 22.0; IBM, Chicago, IL) computer program and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. In the study, it was determined that the mean scores of the patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit were 87.6±17.3 on the ICU-SCQ, 51.0±25.8 on the RC-SQ, and 0.1±0.7, 0.5±1.1 and 0.9±1.5 on the NDESC on the third, fourth and fifth days, respectively. It was determined that there was a strong positive and significant relationship between the scores of the third, fourth and fifth days of the ICU-SCQ and the NDESC scale. In addition, a significant negative correlation was found betweenthe RC-AS and NDESC. These findings suggest that delirium symptoms become stronger with increasing environmental stressors and the risk of delirium increases with worsening sleep quality. In our study, it was determined that the risk of delirium increased with increasing environmental stressors and decreasing sleep quality in patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit. In line with these results, it is recommended to reduce the risk of delirium by implementing practices for environmental stressors and sleep problems in patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit and to plan evidence-based studies to reduce the risk of delirium.