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Literature Review- Sunlight & the Human Body

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Literature Review- Sunlight & the Human Body

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According to Holick (2016), regular exposure to natural sunlight provides many general health benefits :

primary source of vitamin D

required for bone health

improves skin health

boosts mood

regulates sleep/wake cycle

protective effect against many forms of cancer

helps to regulate blood pressure

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Literature Review-  Sunlight and Patient Outcomes

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Literature Review-  Sunlight and Patient Outcomes

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Exposure to direct natural sunlight  helps wean patients earlier from ventilators (Wise & Wallace, 2012).

Nurses should position their patients to receive natural sunlight to regulate circadian rhythm, mood and increase chance of recovery (Minton & Batten, 2015).

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Literature Review- Fighting Infection with Sunlight 

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Literature Review- Fighting Infection with Sunlight 

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Regular exposure to sunlight can help control the spread of TB (Kamau, Rotich, Cheruiyot & Ng'eno, 2015).

Hospitals can use direct sunlight, UV lighting, and infra-red radiation to control infection in hospital rooms (Hobday & Dancer, 2013).

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Please follow this link to my conclusion video:
https://youtu.be/d0DiCpZvumA

[Figure 1. Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, 2017. Retrieved from http://healthcare.wsp-pb.com/portfolio/ng-teng-fong-hospital/] Though the design is unconventional, this configuration of hospital rooms optimizes airflow and sunlight exposure. We need nurses to help design more healing places like this one here in the United States!

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Nightingale's Environmental Philosophy has become my personal theory of nursing (Bolton, 2014) .

An intervention does not need to be complex to be effective (Nightingale, 1969).

The nurse is the manager of the patient's care (Sullivan, 2013). The initiative to create a healing environment begins with the nurse (Bolton, 2014).

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Educate the nurse about the many benefits of sunlight exposure

Make opening the window shades part of the daily routine.

Weather and time permitting, take patients outside!

Empower the nurse by giving him/her permission to arrange the patient's room to make it an appropriate healing environment (Nightingale, 1969).

Routine vitamin D supplementation during hospitalization (Putzu et al., 2016)

Nurses can advocate for the installation of  UV lighting in patient rooms as a method of infection control (Hobday & Dancer, 2013).

Nurses should be consulted  when planning future hospital construction  to ensure sufficient sunlight exposure to patient rooms as part of an overall healing environment

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The challenges to implementing a protocol for exposing patient rooms to sunlight are:

Nurses' lack of education

It is not prioritized

Nurses may not think of it

Fear and inconvenience of disrupting the patient

Time constraints

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Exposing the patient to sunlight is a nursing intervention, not a medical order or medication (Nightingale, 1969).

It is up to the nurse to create an environment that is conducive to healing for the patient  (Bolton, 2014).

the nurse can educate the patient about the importance of exposure to natural light

Nurses can and should attempt to arrange the patient's room in such a way that  the patient receives exposure to natural sunlight (Minton & Batten, 2015).

Nurses are in a position to  advocate for the use of UV lighting to cleanse the patient's room (Hobday & Dancer, 2013).

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Based on my observations:

Nurses may intentionally expose their patients to sunlight by positioning the patient or opening the window shades or windows

Nurses sometimes open up the shades in a patient's room at the patient's request

Never seen a patient taken outside

Nurses have accommodated patient requests to be switched to a room with a window that faces the sun

Patients are not routinely exposed to sufficient sunlight while hospitalized because nurses do not consistently prioritize it

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Literature Review - Vitamin D Deficiency 

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Literature Review - Vitamin D Deficiency 

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Vitamin D deficiency increases LOS and days on ventilator in pediatric intensive care unit  patients. Over half of the PICU patients in the study had a vitamin D deficiency. (Elmoneim et al., 2016).

Vitamin D administration appears to decrease mortality in the ICU (Putzu et al, 2016)

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Hospitalized patients and patient rooms in acute care hospitals often do not receive adequate exposure to natural or simulated sunlight.
This can be due to:

rooms without windows  (Wise & Wallace, 2012).

rooms not oriented to the sun  (Wise & Wallace, 2012).

failing to open window shades

lack of UV lighting (Hobday & Dancer, 2013)

lack of safe place to sit outside

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Please follow this link to my video introduction:
https://youtu.be/Jc5UW6FvF-Q