(A145) Quantifying Wake-up Events of Post-operative Head & Neck Oncology Patients on an Otolaryngology Inpatient Floor

Introduction: Sleep is vital for normal physiologic functioning and has been shown to impact post-operative pain, length of stay, and quality of life. Despite these links, patients admitted after head & surgery frequently report poor sleep quality and duration, in part due to frequent overnight awakenings. We sought to quantify the number of patient room entry events as a surrogate measure for patient awakenings.

Methods: In this retrospective review, GOJO Purell Smartlink sensor data for single-occupancy inpatient rooms largely used for head & neck surgery patients was retrieved for a 2-week period spanning from 9/18/2023 - 10/1/2023. The timestamps of when the sensor detected a person entering the room ("In event") were extracted. Rooms were only included in the daily analysis if they had at least 20 In events (≥ 5th percentile) on a given day to exclude rooms that were not occupied for most of the day.

Results: Occupied rooms had a median number of In events per day of 67.5 (interquartile range 53.0 to 87.0). 64% of these occurred during the hours of 7am - 7pm. Between the hours of 10pm to 6am, the average number of In events per day was 12.3. The lowest average rate of In events was between the period of 3-4am (0.86 per hour).

Conclusions: Sleep is of vital importance for normal physiologic functioning as well as post-operative pain, length of stay, and quality of life measures. Post-operative head & neck surgery patients experience frequent awakenings overnight in part due to vital checks and medication administration. Room sensor data demonstrates an average number of nightly (10pm-6am) room entries of 12.3 per patient.