Improving Sleep Health Management in Primary Care: Identifying and Addressing Current Practice Gaps Using Pedagogical Strategies

Abstract

Background: Sleep is now emerging as a key pillar of health. Although prevalent, sleep disorders such as insomnia and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) are underdiagnosed/undertreated. Australian primary care is usually the first point of contact between health professionals and patients with sleep disturbances. Therefore, it is important to document the current practice roles of primary care professionals and assess/address perceived needs in sleep health management.

Objectives: To document the current practice of community/consultant pharmacists and community nurses in sleep health care and elicit their perspectives on future provisions. Another objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of a sleep health educational module for 2nd year undergraduate pharmacy students in improving sleep health-related knowledge and attitudes.

Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out with community/consultant pharmacists and community nurses. Interviews were inductively analysed. Clear knowledge-practice gaps identified in this phase informed the development of a sleep health module, which was tested for impact in a pre-post study design.

Results: All participants in our qualitative work reported insomnia as a common presentation alongside OSA. They expressed the need for more directed sleep health training and the development of standardised treatment guidelines. These findings led to the design of a pedagogically informed module implemented with pharmacy students. The pre-post intervention evaluation of this module indicated that the flipped style module with its authentic learning experiences improved sleep-related knowledge and facilitated active engagement/student satisfaction.

Conclusion: There is a current evidence-to-practice gap in sleep health practices among pharmacist and nurse professionals. It is important to therefore target this issue through discipline-specific, pedagogically framed educational interventions that can impact future practice.