NURS 668 Week 3 Discussion Board Forum 1 on Choosing a Capstone Wellness Topic Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: Introducing and Justifying a Capstone Wellness Topic

NURS 668 Health/Wellness Capstone Project, Discussion Board Forum 1

Thread by [Student Name]

The unit, colleagues and classmates replied to are composites written for a model discussion.

At 7:20 one morning last month, a colleague who had just finished her fourth night in a row told me she planned to "sleep fast" so she could take her son to a dentist appointment at one. Everyone laughed, including me. Later, driving home, I counted the nights in the past month when I had slept less than five hours before a shift, and the number was eleven. That moment made me choose my capstone topic: sleep health among night-shift nurses. On my unit, exhaustion is treated as part of the job, something to joke about rather than something to address, and I think that makes it a wellness problem hiding in plain sight.

The scale of the problem is larger than most nurses assume. In a national study of 132,910 nurses in 67 tertiary hospitals, Bin et al. (2025) found sleep disturbance in 24.1%, most often trouble staying asleep and waking too early, with higher rates among nurses in critical care, emergency, pediatric and obstetric units. Poor sleep affects mood, metabolism and attention, so it matters for nurses' own health and for the safety of their patients. The same study found that long working hours were among the factors linked to disturbed sleep, which suggests that the problem is partly organizational and not only a matter of personal habits.

Three questions will guide the capstone: what short or broken sleep does to night nurses and to their work, which approaches actually help shift workers sleep, and what an education program for the 40 nurses who work nights on my unit should include. I plan to look closely at sleep education, managing light and noise before daytime sleep, and mindfulness, because those are things a nurse can change at home without waiting for a new schedule. If nurses can learn to protect their own sleep the way they protect their patients' rest, the whole unit may be safer.

The psalmist wrote that God gives sleep to those He loves (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Psalm 127:2). Sleep is part of His design, not a weakness to be overcome, and I hope my capstone helps my colleagues treat it that way.

Reply to Joanna

Joanna, your capstone on stress management for new graduate nurses could connect with sleep in a useful way. Chu et al. (2026) surveyed 1,608 shift nurses and identified four sleep profiles, ranging from good sleep quality in 44.4% to sleep disorder with frequent sleeping pill use in 5.3%. If new graduates fall disproportionately into the poorer profiles, a stress program might add sleep screening to identify who needs the most help. Would your program include any sleep content? Even a short sleep questionnaire at the start of your program could show whether new graduates on rotating schedules sleep worse than those on fixed days, and that comparison might strengthen the case for your intervention when you present it to your unit's educator.

Reply to Luis

Luis, I agree with you that fatigue is a patient safety issue and not only a personal one. Casas-Méndez et al. (2026) tested 67 emergency nurses after a night shift and again after a night of rest at home, and found lower oxygenation in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain used for planning and attention, after the night shift. For your capstone on medication errors, that study could help explain why errors cluster late in a night. It also suggests a practical step for your education program: teaching nurses to double-check high-alert medications more deliberately after 3 a.m., when the effects of a long night are likely to be strongest, rather than relying on vigilance that the study shows is already reduced.

References

Bin, C., Li, X., Tian, Y., Chen, Z., Liu, Y., Ning, M., Yang, J., Yu, Q., Huang, C., Zhang, D., Yuan, J., Ren, Z., & Li, Y. (2025). Prevalence of sleep disturbance and associated factors among nurses in Chinese tertiary public hospitals: A national cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, Article 1735543. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1735543

Casas-Méndez, C., Martín-Parrilla, M. Á., Cáceres, M. C., Montanero-Fernández, J., López-Jurado, C. F., & Durán-Gómez, N. (2026). Effects of night shifts on sleep, cognitive performance, and anxiety in emergency nurses: An observational within-subject study. Journal of Nursing Management, 2026, Article 1635579. https://doi.org/10.1155/jonm/1635579

Chu, X., Lv, J., Li, G., & Wang, D. (2026). Latent profile analysis of sleep quality and associated factors on sleep patterns in night-shift nurses: A cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, Article 1800662. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1800662

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)