'Appears to have slept well': assessing sleep in an acute care setting.

Sleep disturbance is a common occurrence in the hospital environment where the patients' perceptions of their own sleep are rarely considered in the planning of care. This study aims to determine the difference between subjective (Verran/Snyder-Halpern Sleep Scale), objective (Patient's Sleep Behaviour Observational Tool) and physiological (Actigraph) assessments of a patients' single sleep event within an acute care setting by examining the variables Total Sleep, Midsleep Awakening and Sleep Latency. Results indicate no statistically significant difference between instruments for the assessment of total sleep. Midsleep awakening was of questionable value when assessed in the clinical environment. Sleep latency could be useful following further attention to defining the length and time of onset of the nurse observation period.