Bath Machine on Sleep Quality in Nursing Home

The trends of bath disability in elderly consistently increased and, enhance, the demand of helping bath for the elderly also increased in Taiwan. Bathing is an important item of activities of daily living for human. Bathing not only keeps the body clean but also makes body comfort. Some studies showed that taking hot (40-40.5°C) baths 1.5 - 2 hours before bedtime resulted in a significant increase slow wave sleep (SWS) in the early part of the sleep period and improving sleep continuity in older female insomniacs.

Nurse aides are one of important human resource for long-term care institution. In Taiwan, Chao et al. reported that nurse aides had long-term accumulating discomfort over neck, shoulders and lower back during helping disable residents to carry out activity daily life. However, the body discomfort in nurse aides significantly decreased by using auxiliary equipment during assisting the elderly to carry out activity daily life. Therefore, it is important to use auxiliary equipment to prevent injury during work for nurse aides.

This study is interested in applying edde massage bathtub to improve sleep quality for disable residents in long-term care institutions. The study is divided into two stages, first stage of the study is to train nurse aides to use the bathtub machine (which has edde massage function) and solicits the opinions of nurse aides about factors related to the accessibility and safety of bath-tub machine using focus group methods. The purposes of the first stage study are (1) to examine the feasibility and simplicity of the operation of bathtub machine for nurse aides; (2) to examine the safety and comfortability of the bathtub machine from the perspectives of the nurse aides.

Second stage of the study is to explore the experiences of nurse aides and disabled elderly by using the bathtub machine. The purposes of the second stage study are (1) to understand the experiences of nurse aides and the elderly with disability by using the bathtub machine(which has edde massage function); (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of using the bathtub machine on the sleep quality and body temperature in the elderly with disability.

Inclusion criteria

• More than half a year in the institution
• 18 years of age (including) or above, with the help of bathing
• Be conscious, able to listen, speak Chinese

Exclusion criteria

• Acute illness
• Diabetes
• Peripheral blood vessels or neurological diseases
• Mental disorders
• Sleep apnea
• Long-term hemodialysis