My pledge was to improve the quality of sleep for our patients by introducing sleep pack on one ward and also to review the noise levels on the ward.Feedback for our patients from FFT and also the national IP survey showed that our patient's were being disturbed by noise at night by both staff and other patients.
Working with Ward 6 at Grantham Hospital, we decided to use an idea from the FAB website about sleep packs which include a sleep mask and earplugs.
We have designed 2 types of packs with different ear plugs... corded and uncorded and each patient will be given the most suitable pack depending on a risk assessment.
A patient leaflet which gives helpful hints and tips on a good nights sleep has also been developed to be given to patients who ask for a sleep pack.Currently we have a SoundEar on the ward which visually displays the sounds levels on the ward and is acting as an alert to staff that noise levels are too high.
Patients receiving a pack will be asked about the quality of their sleep before they received their pack and again a few days after receiving one to see if their sleep quality has improved.
Future steps will be to seek charitable funding to roll the project out to further wards and also use the SoundEar to monitor noise levels across more wards.