Using Massage to Reduce Use of Sedative-Hypnotic Drugs With Older Adults A Brief Report From a Pilot Study

Despite known adverse effects, sedative-hypnotic drugs (SHDs) are widely used in institutional settings serving the elderly. Using a 2 (Intervention, Control) x 3 (Baseline, Intervention, Withdrawal) mixed design with random assignment to the intervention (n = 15) or control (n = 13) group, the authors sought to determine if a nonpharmacological sleep intervention (massage at bedtime) could reduce "as-needed" SHD (PRN-SHD) usage. Each phase of this pilot lasted 7 days and PRN-SHD usage was monitored via chart review. Results, indicating a 13% greater reduction in requests for PRN-SHD for the intervention group when it received massage, approached statistical significance for the quadratic planned comparisons (p = .17) despite limited power (.28) for the observed effect size of .07. While preliminary, results suggest that massage at bedtime may reduce PRN-SHD usage with older adults. Randomized controlled studies with larger samples are needed.