Presenters
Summary
Sleep complaints/disorders account for more than 5 million office visits per year in primary care. There are several important risk factors for sleep disorders including age, sex, current life circumstances, intrinsic and genetic factors, and a variety of other health conditions including cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic diseases, chronic pain, conditions encouraging hyperarousal, cancer, neurological conditions, mental health problems, and other sleep disorders. Additionally, it’s important to recognize that many of the medication treatments provided for the commonly co-occurring conditions, such as antidepressants, beta blockers, prednisone, and OTC medications, will unfortunately have sleep disturbance as a potential side effect, which is why research suggests the importance of addressing co-occurring conditions. Early identification of problematic sleep, frequent education of patients, and utilization of a team based intervention approach may help both providers and patients decrease frustration with persistent sleep disturbance symptoms, improve intervention compliance and confidence, encourage support, address co-occurring conditions and/symptoms, and leave the patient with skills that can be used for potential subsequent episodes of sleep disturbance. Members of care teams may include, but are not limited to, primary care providers, sleep medicine providers, behavioral health providers, pharmacists, and nurses. Team based interventions may include referrals for sleep studies, mask desensitization for patients with sleep apnea, referral to a CBTi trained provider, or use of CBTi adapted for primary care. Having on hand a variety of educational material that is population specific may also help with patient education and intervention reinforcement. This presentation will discuss the development and implementation of a performance improvement project within the CentraCare Health System in Central Minnesota.
Objectives
- Participants will be able to identify criterion for diagnosis of insomnia and circadian rhythm sleep wake disorders.
- Participants will be able to list and discuss common co-occurring medical conditions with sleep disorders and populations at higher risk for sleep disorders
- Participants will be able to describe their immediate available resources for education and team-based care of sleep disorders