VR Integrated Into Multicomponent Interventions for Improving Sleep in ICU

Overview

Background: The patients who are admitted to ICUs mostly experience sleep disturbance. Seeking an effective strategy and integrating it into the daily routine is of clinical importance. Therefore, we aim to examine the effects of guided virtual reality integrated into the multicomponent program (SLEEP care) on sleep quality and quantity in critically ill patients. This will be a randomized controlled trial with assessor-blinded and two-arm parallel-group design. A total of 120 critical ill adults will be randomly allocated to the SLEEP care group and eyemask groups in a 1:1 ratio (60 participants in each group).

This study is expected to enroll 120 critically ill patients. We will collect basic data on the first day of admission to the intensive care unit, including demographics and disease characteristics, pain, anxiety, and stress, sleep quality and quantity, measure 5-minute HRV, wear an actigraph watch, and connect to the on-lead EEG sensor, and attach the brain wave to monitor the brain wave and sleep cycle. Then they will be randomly assigned 1:1, dividing into SLEEP care group and eyemask group. Participants who are in the control will receive eyemask intervention and daily care in the ICU. Participants who are assigned to the SLEEP care group will receive the VR and night sleep promotion routine. The researcher will assist participants to wear a virtual reality helmet for a 30-minute program at 10 pm, and then remove the helmet and wear eye masks until 6:30 in the morning. The ICU routine care of promoting sleep is still maintained. The next morning (the second day of the ICU), the researcher will assist participants to remove EEG sensors and evaluate the RCSQ scale to understand the previous night's sleep. The above process will repeat for three days (ICU days 1 to 3) until the intervention and measurement during the intensive care unit are completed on the morning of the fourth day. In order to understand the impact of sleep on cognitive function during the stay in the intensive care units and after discharge, the PSQI, VAS of pain, anxiety, and stress (confounders), and MOCA will be evaluated in the first and sixth months after discharge.