Best practices for managing sleep in intensive care patients to reduce the risk of delirium

Delirium is a disturbance of consciousness with reduced ability to focus, sustain or shift attention, which develops over a short period of time and involves a change in cognition. It may lead to higher morbidity, long term deterioration of cognitive and functional processes and mortality. Seriously ill intensive care patients may experience their care as extremely strenuous due to pain, anxiety, foreign environment and side effects of various potent drugs. Many factors may thus contribute to the development of delirium. Disturbed sleep is an additional important factor.