Natural Sounds in Management of Elderly Sleep Quality: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: there is no clear consensus on the effect of natural sounds on elderly sleep quality, as one of the most common causes of disability in them. this study aimed to determine the effect of natural sounds on elderly sleep quality.material & methods: in this randomized controlled trial, 100 elderly were selected based on the inclusion criteria from comprehensive health care centers and then divided into two equal groups by simple random sampling method. the intervention group listened to the natural sounds in mp3 format every night for 2 weeks, 30 minutes before going to bed, through mobile phone and hands-free. the control group did not receive any intervention. the psqi was measured before and after the intervention. data analysis was done in spss software (version 22) applying the shapiro-wilk test, chi-square, and fisher exact test, independent samples-t test, wilcoxon signed ranks test, and mann whitney u test. a confidence level of 95% was considered.results: in the intergroup comparison, in the baseline, groups were the same in terms of the total sleep quality score as well as other components (p>0.05). after the intervention, there was a significance difference between the two groups in terms of global sleep quality (p=0.048), sleep latency (p=0.001), habitual sleep efficacy (p= 0.012), and sleep disturbance (p=0.01).conclusion: based on the our results, natural sounds could improve the sleep quality in the elderly.