The Effect of Footbath on Sleep Quality of the Elderly: A Blinded Randomized Clinical Trial

Introduction: the progressive increase in the elderly population of developingcountries has drawn attention to their health. sleep pattern and quality can affect lifequality in old people. we need more documents about footbath (a non-invasivemethod). the purpose of this research was to examine footbath on sleep quality of theelderly. methods: this study is a blinded, randomized, clinical trial on 46 old men thathad health documents in health center, 2013. participants in the research were dividedinto two groups. one group had footbath (experimental group) and another group didnot have footbath (control group). the experimental group participants were asked toput their feet in warm water (41-42 ?c) for 20 minutes before sleeping for 6 weeks. theco-researcher completed the pittsburgh sleep quality index (psqi) before and after theintervention by individual interview. data were analyzed by spss software. results: the comparison of changes in sleep quality score the old men showed thesleep duration and total sleep quality has significantly improved in the experimentalgroup. conclusion: according to the study results, the maximum effect of footbath was onsleep latency and sleep duration disturbances. in this study, the researchers had limitedaccess to the elderly in tabriz; therefore, it is recommended that future research beconducted in a higher number of health centers.