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Parents who care for children with medical complexity are at risk for sleep dysfunction owing to their children's 24-hours-per-day care needs. Objective measurement of such sleep problems could inform creation of effective interventions to improve parental sleep.
Researchers prospectively collected sleep data by actigraphy for 6 days and 7 nights from 40 parents of children who depend on medical technology and 40 parents of healthy children in Toronto, Canada. They then examined associations between the sleep data and quality of life, depressive symptoms, and sleepiness/fatigue based on parental survey responses.
Parents of children dependent on medical technology had worse objective sleep outcomes, including less overall sleep (6.6 vs. 7.2 h…