16^th World Neonatology and Perinatology Congress

Sleep deprivation holds many consequences for critically ill patients including slower recovery, decreased resistance to infection and neurological problems such as delirium (Dick-Smith 2017). A shift in nursing and institutional culture is required to apply sleep promotion strategies and research, and to minimise unpleasant outcomes for patients (Dick-Smith 2017). This paper will present provisional data from both phases of this Constructivist Grounded Theory approach. It will emphasie what has been learnt about nurses’ decision making and how this can influence the quality of sleep their patients achieve in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).  It will particularly focus on exploring the categories, three main themes and core category of Professional and Regulatory Compliance that have now been identified as part of phase 2 of the study. The links between these will be explained. These include the theme of “not on my shift behavior” and the role that clinical audit may have on junior nurses’ decision making. Data has been collected from 15 participants that have been interviewed with semi structured, relating this to established models of decision making and cognitive processes discussed in the literature focusing on, and exploring, nurses’ decision making in relation to sleep deprivation in the ICU.