Abstract

Disturbed sleep can affect personal wellbeing and impede the rehabilitation and recovery of older people from illness. • This paper reports the findings of a pilot study which included examination of sleep quality and sleep patterns of older people in community hospital and nursing home settings. • A marked proportion of older people reported sleeping well in nursing care settings, and those in nursing homes slept better than those in the community hospital. • The main causes of sleep disturbance in both settings were: needing to go to the toilet, noise, pain, and discomfort; a similar pattern was seen across the different settings. • No discernible difference was found in quality of sleep and whether patients felt rested or not between those patients on hypnotic medication and those who were not. • The implications of the findings for practice and future research are discussed.