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Characterizing Patterns of Nurses’ Daily Sleep Health: a Latent Profile Analysis

International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Nursing is a demanding occupation characterized by dramatic sleep disruptions. Yet most studies on nurses’ sleep treat sleep disturbances as a homogenous construct and do not use daily measures to address recall biases. Using person-centered analyses, we examined heterogeneity in nurses' daily sleep patterns in relation to psychological and physical health.

Methods

Nurses (N = 392; 92% female, mean age = 39.54 years) completed 14 daily sleep diaries to assess sleep duration, efficiency, quality, and nightmare severity, as well as measures of psychological functioning and a blood draw to assess inflammatory markers interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). Using recommended fit indices and a 3-step approach, latent profile analysis was used to identify the best-fitting class solution.

Results

The best-fitting solution suggested three classes: (1) “Poor Overall Sleep” (11.2%), (2) “Nightmares Only” (8.4%), (3) “Good Overall Sleep” (80.4%). Compared to nurses in the Good Overall Sleep class, nurses in the Poor Overall Sleep or Nightmares Only classes were more likely to be shift workers and had greater stress, PTSD symptoms, depression, anxiety, and insomnia severity. In multivariate models, every one-unit increase in insomnia severity and IL-6 was associated with a 33% and a 21% increase in the odds of being in the Poor Overall Sleep compared to the Good Overall Sleep class, respectively.

Conclusion

Nurses with more severe and diverse sleep disturbances experience worse health and may be in greatest need of sleep-related and other clinical interventions.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all nurse participants and research assistants who contributed to this project.

Funding

This research supported by grant National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases R01AI128359‐01 (PIs: Taylor & Kelly).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Texas, Denton, USA

    Danica C. Slavish, Ateka A. Contractor, Brett Messman, Heather R. Lucke, Madasen Briggs, Camilo Ruggero & Kimberly Kelly

  2. Oregon State University, Corvallis, USA

    Jessica R. Dietch

  3. Dallas Fire-Rescue, Dallas, USA

    James Thornton

  4. Iowa State University, Ames, USA

    Marian Kohut

  5. University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

    Daniel J. Taylor

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  1. Danica C. Slavish
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  2. Ateka A. Contractor
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  3. Jessica R. Dietch
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  5. Heather R. Lucke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Danica C. Slavish.

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Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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The author Slavish has received research grants from Canopy Growth Corporation that are outside the scope of the current work. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Slavish, D.C., Contractor, A.A., Dietch, J.R. et al. Characterizing Patterns of Nurses’ Daily Sleep Health: a Latent Profile Analysis. Int.J. Behav. Med. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-021-10048-4

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Keywords

  • Latent profile analysis
  • Nurses
  • Sleep diary
  • Longitudinal
  • Nightmares