Date of Conferral

8-21-2025

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Joan Hahn

Abstract

Sleep disorders are prevalent in primary care settings and often remain underdiagnosed due to inconsistent assessment practices. This doctoral project was conducted to develop, implement, and evaluate whether an educational intervention for registered nurses would enhance their knowledge on using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) for sleep assessment in primary care. Guided by adult learning theories and the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation instructional design model, the aim of the project was to address the practice gap related to inadequate sleep evaluations, ultimately improving patient outcomes and promoting holistic care. Evidence was collected through pre and post intervention assessments, participant feedback (N = 5), and a skills checklist. Findings indicated an overall increase in nurses’ mean scores on a nine-item survey pre- (M = 3.98) to postintervention (M = 4.76), a 19.6% change increase. Except for one item on a 10-item skills checklist (only one participant reported difficulty in ensuring patient understanding of each scenario), 100% of participants rated themselves as competent in administering the ESS. The findings suggest that targeted staff education can effectively achieve the expected outcome that educational interventions improved staff’s knowledge of using standardized tools. The project’s implications include the potential to improve nursing practice by establishing a standardized approach to sleep assessment using a validated tool such as the ESS, thus affording greater recognition of sleep issues affecting sleep health and improving patient outcomes and their quality of life.

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