Abstract

Background: Nursing home residents often experience sleep disorders, along with physical, emotional, and cognitive problems. This study aimed to  investigate the effect of magnetic stimulation therapy (MST) for nursing homes residents with sleep disturbances.

Methods: This quasi-experimental study used a crossover design. Group I (n = 20) received MST for 2 weeks using low-intensity magnetic fields (100 Gauss) and then received routine care after a wash-out period. Group II (n = 18) conversely received routine care and MST later. Objective sleep quality was examined using a wearable device to measure sleep architecture before and after each intervention.

Results: The average age of the participants was 84.3 years. After MST, there was a significant increase in total sleep time (t = 4.91, p < 0.001), total bed time (t = 4.58, p < 0.001), number of wakes after sleep onset (t = 2.87, p = 0.007), rapid eye movement time (t = 5.09, p < 0.001), percent of rapid eye movement (t = 4.01, p < 0.001) and non-rapid eye movement stage 1, 2 (t = 3.05, p = 0.004).

Conclusion: This study had shown that MST was an effective method to improve the objective sleep quality of nursing home residents with sleep disturbance. Therefore,MST is recommended to conduct a routine intervention to evaluate the long-term effects for nursing home residents.