Effectiveness of Comprehensive Intervention Package on Quality of Sleep among Patients with Arthritis in Selected Old Age Home at Chennai

Arthritis is a painful condition affecting joint, joint tissues and other connecting tissues with the manifestation of joint pain, swelling and stiffness which typically worsen with age. Tai chi and guided imagery could minimize those symptoms. True experimental research design was used for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 30 patients with arthritis as study participants (15 in experimental group and 15 in control group). The quality of sleep among patients with arthritis was assessed by Pittsburgh sleep Quality Index comprehensive intervention package was administered and that includes Tai Chi and Guided Imagery. Tai Chai exercises given, include a group of exercise with slow movements and breathing which includes warmup exercises with 3 basic moves such as warrior & scholar, brush the knee and part the horse mane for 30 minutes thrice weekly and Guided Imagery which includes assessing the problem, positioning, breathing, developing the scene and creating the journey for 30 minutes twice weekly to the experimental group for one month. For the control group participants, routine practices usually done in the old age home and after which posttest was administered. The study findings showed that the pretest and posttest mean quality of sleep score was 10.93 & 5.13 with standard deviation of 1.33 & 1.36 respectively in experimental group. The paired ‘t’ value was 5.12 which revealed that there was a highly statistically significant difference between the pretest and posttest level of quality of sleep at p<0.001. The independent ‘t’ test value was 8.68 which revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in the posttest level of quality of sleep between experimental and control group at p<0.001. There was no statistically significant difference in the pretest and posttest mean quality of sleep score in the control group.