Improving post-operative sleep through therapeutic stroking: A study on patient well-being in modern surgical recovery environments

Background: Sleep plays an important role in post operative patients. Back massage reduces anxiety, discomfort, and physical suffering in post operative ward and that patient pain caused by prolonged time in bed, and experience high levels of sleep disruption irregular sleep cycle and variation in slow wave sleep. Objectives: The aim of the present study is to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic stroking in improving the quality of sleep among post operative patients in experimental group. Methods and Materials: The research approach was quantitative research approach and the research design adopted was quasi experimental design. The sample size was 50 patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were chosen by using simple random sampling technique. Pre-test was assessed by using Groningen sleep quality scale on the first day of data collection. Following to the pre-test, intervention of the study (Therapeutic Stroking) was given to the study participants for 20-30 minutes. After 7 days post-test was assessed by using the same questionnaire. Results: The study findings reveal that 84% achieved normal sleep, 16% had moderately disturbed sleep, and no patients reported disturbed sleep in the post-test. Comparison shows that in the post-test level of sleep quality mean value 1.16 ± 0.89 is significantly lower than pre-test level 6.84 ± 2.73 and p value 0.000 is less than 0.01 and is highly significant at 1% level and hence we can say there is high significant difference between the pre and post-test sleep quality level among patients in experimental group. In association the p values corresponding to the demographic variables are not less than 0.05 and are significant at 5% level and hence we can say that there is no significant association between the sleep quality level. Conclusion: Hence, we can conclude that the patients in experimental group are having better sleep quality than the patients in control group since they had “Therapeutic stroking method of kneading massage” and this suggests that the intervention applied in the experimental group had a substantial positive impact on sleep quality. Clinical trial number : Not applicable.