Which practice aligns with creating a sleep-friendly hospital environment?

• A. Bright lights and frequent hallway noise.
• B. Keep environmental factors stable and minimize disruptions during night hours.
• C. Randomize care activities to keep patients alert.
• D. Maintain ongoing traffic through patient rooms at night.

Answer: (B)

Creating a sleep-friendly hospital environment centers on minimizing disturbances and stabilizing cues that guide a patient’s sleep. Nighttime lighting, noise, and frequent room entries fragment sleep and disrupt circadian rhythms, which can hinder healing and increase delirium risk. Keeping environmental factors stable and minimizing disruptions during night hours supports longer, more consolidated sleep, aiding recovery and overall outcomes. In practice, this means dimming lights at night, reducing noise, clustering care tasks to avoid repeated awakenings, and limiting nonessential room traffic during overnight hours. Bright lights, loud hallways, random care interruptions, and constant room traffic would disrupt sleep and are not conducive to a sleep-friendly environment.