Continuing Education for Mentors and a Mentoring Program for RN-to-BSN Students.

Mentoring programs have been used effectively with graduate and undergraduate nursing students and newly licensed nurses. There are few publications about mentoring for the RN enrolled in a bachelor of science in nursing (RN-to-BSN) program. To address low graduation rates in the public RN-to-BSN nursing programs, the Montana Center to Advance Health Through Nursing designed a mentoring program to help these nurses achieve their BSN. This voluntary program was initiated at an RN-to-BSN program in a 4-year college with six RN students who were paired with a mentor. An interactive, continuing education workshop on mentoring also was developed to prepare experienced nurses for their role as a mentor. This workshop was held nine times across Montana, with a total of 156 attendees. Workshop evaluations were consistently positive. Participants identified time and personality issues as barriers to successful mentoring and recommended expansion of the workshop to a distance-learning format so more nurses could attend. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2016;47(6):272-277.

Variations in sleep hygiene practices of women with and without insomnia.

Sleep hygiene education is a basic component of behavioral treatment for chronic insomnia, yet the actual sleep hygiene practices of people with insomnia have not been well documented. In this descriptive secondary analysis, midlife women ages 41-55 years with either chronic insomnia (n = 92) or good sleep (n = 29) kept diaries of sleep perceptions and sleep hygiene practices during 6 nights of somnographic monitoring at home. In both groups few reported smoking cigarettes (<10%), most drank caffeine (>80%), and many averaged 30 min of exercise per day ( approximately 50%). Very few in either group (<10%) had regular (<30 min variation) bedtimes or getting-up times. Compared to women with good sleep, those with insomnia reported drinking less caffeine per day, being more abstinent from alcohol, and having smaller variations in day-to-day alcohol intake and bedtimes. Although some women with insomnia limit or refrain from caffeine and alcohol intake, many have not optimized behaviors believed to help prevent or modulate insomnia.

Lifestyle practices and nocturnal sleep in midlife women with and without insomnia.

Relationships between common lifestyle practices important to sleep hygiene (e.g., smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, ingesting caffeine, exercising, bed times, getting-up times) and nocturnal sleep have not been documented for women with insomnia in their home environments. This community-based sample of 121 women, ages 40 to 55 years, included 92 women who had experienced insomnia for at least 3 months and 29 women with good-quality sleep. Women recorded lifestyle practices and sleep perceptions (time to fall asleep, awakenings during sleep, feeling rested after sleeping, and overall sleep quality) in diaries while undergoing 6 nights of somnographic sleep monitoring at home. Compared to women with good-quality sleep, women with insomnia reported greater night-to-night variation in perceived sleep variables, poorer overall sleep quality (M = 2.8, SD = 0.7 vs. M = 1.9, SD = 0.5, P < 0.05), and longer times to fall asleep (M = 25 min, SD = 14.2 vs. M= 12.9 min, SD = 5.8, P < 0.05). Correlations between mean individual lifestyle practice scores and mean perceived or somnographic sleep variables were low, ranging from 0 to 0.20. An aggregated sleep hygiene practice score was not associated with either perceived or somnographic sleep variables. Regression analysis using dummy variables showed that combinations of alcohol, caffeine, exercise, smoking, and history of physical disease explained 9% to 19% of variance in perceived or somnographic sleep variables. Lifestyle practices, and combinations thereof, do warrant consideration when assessing or treating insomnia, but these data fail to support a dominant relationship between lifestyle practices and either perceived or somnographic sleep variables.