Introduction: Critically ill patients during an intensive care unit treatment are likely to suffer from sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is considered a very important stressor during hospitalization. Lack of sleep is connected to many adverse effects on a patient's treatment and to the length of the hospitalization. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to introduce the problem of low-quality sleep and sleep deprivation of hospitalized patients in intensive care units and to investigate the important role of the nurses in providing high-quality sleep. Methods: We used a descriptive method of work and systematically reviewed several sources of domestic and foreign literature by searching for resources in the following databases: PubMed/Medline, CINAHL, DiKUL, COBIB. SI. With this method, and by checking the reference lists, we identified 875 publications, 13 of which were included in the final analysis. We used Eccles & Mason system to assess the quality of the analyzed articles. Results: Critically ill patients most often state noise as the main reason for disturbed sleep. Noise is followed by pain, which is the main factor for the sleep disturbance in the patients’ and health-care workers’ view. Critically ill patients also listed waking up during the night as a disturbing factor, which is often a consequence of routine activities of the health-care workers. Very important are also psychological factors, which have often a bigger impact on a patient's sleep than the external factors. With the use of ear plugs, sleep masks and letting the critically ill patients listen to music before sleep, researchers improved the depth of the patients’ sleep and observed lower heart rates. There was also less waking up during the night and critically ill patients reported an improvement in their sleep. We researched the most often viewed rating scales for critically ill patients’ sleep, which describe their subjective rating of sleep such as the Richard Campbell sleep scale, Verran and Snyder-Halpern sleep scale and The Sleep in the Intensive Care Unit Questionnaire. Discussion and conclusion: Performance of health-care workers has a significant impact on the quality of sleep of critically ill patients. Everyone present in an Intensive Care Unit has an effect on the sleep of critically ill patients. Nurses have a very important role in planning and performing the intensive care unit activities, as they can stimulate therapeutic environment and medical treatment that enable longer sleeping times and better-quality sleep of the critically ill patients. To further improve sleep of the critically ill patient it is important to have knowledge of diverse sleeping assessment tools. In Slovenia it would be good to introduce various sleeping assessment tools to the intensive care units to aid the overall nursing care of the critically ill patients.
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