ABSTRACT
Objective: Sleep quality affects pregnant women's health and quality of life. The aims of the study were to investigate the prevalence of sleep disorders and the effect of sleep health education on sleep quality in pregnant women with sleep disorders. Methods: To examine the frequency of sleep disorders among pregnant women, a cross-sectional study was conducted with an initial enrollment of 370 participants. Subsequently, 162 pregnant women were recruited for a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design study. The intervention group (n = 82) performed sleep health education for four weeks and the control group (n = 80) received standard care. Sleep quality was assessed with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality. Results: The prevalence of sleep disorder was 61.9 percent (CI 95% 56.85-66.69). It was determined that health education improved some sleep quality subscales including subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration and habitual sleep efficiency, and sleep disturbances, daytime dysfunction, and global sleep quality. The difference was still significant after adjusting for the PSQI baseline (η2 = .311, P < .001). Conclusion: These findings provide evidence of a relatively high prevalence of sleep disorders in pregnancy. Therefore, screening for sleep disorders and providing supportive programs and models to improve sleep quality during pregnancy should be considered as part of prenatal care.
