Abstract

Objective: Sleep is an important need that influences daily life and quality of life of every individual, has a role in meeting basic needs of human, and consists of physiological, psychological, and social aspects. The present study was designed to systematically review the studies investigating the effect of footbath on sleep quality of elderly individuals.

Method: In this descriptive study, 7 articles that were published in English and allowed full text access were addressed without time limitation and by using the key words of “footbath”, “sleep”, “sleep quality” and “age” on MEDLINE, Pubmed, Cochrane, Science Direction, Google Scholar, and Researchgate databases. These articles were reviewed in terms of the effect of footbath on sleep quality of elderly individually.

Results: In the studies with experimental and control groups, the rate of sleep disorder was determined to decrease in experimental group before and after the intervention. Experimentally cross-sectional studies revealed there was no statistically significant difference between the night with the application and the night without the application (P˃0.05).

Conclusion: Footbath, a non-pharmacological method, is an effective application to enhance sleep quality of individuals with sleep problem; therefore, it is recommended to be applied to individuals with sleep problem.