Sleep disturbances are common among cancer patients. Especially during hospitalization, not only adverse medical conditions but also ward environments can affect sleep. We have developed a program of sleep-hygiene education and sleeping pill reduction for inpatients (the i-sleep program) and applied it to cancer patients. This study aimed to explore the effect of the program.

In a general hospital with 2,715 beds, we estimated the proportion of inpatients prescribed hypnotics at admission to and discharge from the department of oncology before (2014) and after (2015) the program. In addition, we estimated the proportion of inpatients prescribed hypnotics among all inpatients in the department of oncology on the first day of each month of 2014 and 2015.

A total of 12,382 patients (2014, before) and 12,313 patients (2015, after) were admitted to oncology department of Asan Medical Center. The proportion of inpatients prescribed hypnotics as discharge medication among inpatients who had been prescribed them at the time of admission decreased significantly, from 76.0% (2014) to 69.8% (2015), after the program (RR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.87–0.98). The proportion of inpatients newly prescribed sleeping pills after admission to the hospital did not significantly decrease (4.03% to 3.98%; RR = 0.99, 95% CI: 0.87–1.12). The mean prescription rate of sleeping pills per day was 10.02% in 2014 and 7.99% in 2015 (P = 0.03).

Although the i-sleep program did not reduce the prescription rate of sleeping pills per day, it effectively reduced the proportion of cancer patients who continued to take sleeping pills from admission until discharge.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.