Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Community-Based Education

Abstract

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common sleep disorder that is relatively unknown to the general population. Undiagnosed OSA can have detrimental problems overtime, along with a lack of education on OSA within communities, requires a multidisciplinary approach to implement community-based education. A literature review was performed on various educational approaches and the effects on OSA knowledge base, diagnosis, screening, and adherence rates. A quality improvement scholarly project was performed at a pulmonary and sleep medicine clinic in Orlando, Florida, with a primary purpose to improve participant knowledge base on OSA in patients at risk of OSA, quantified by pretest and posttest scores before and after an OSA PowerPoint presentation video. The secondary purposes of this scholarly project were to improve OSA diagnosis rates after watching the video, quantified by the number of sleep studies obtained by participants within two months and to make evidence based recommendations to implement the use of the OSA video into routine patient care at the pulmonary and sleep medicine clinic to increase participant knowledge of OSA in participants who are at risk and sleep studies obtained by these participants. Of the 6 patients at the pulmonary and sleep medicine clinic who volunteered to participate in the scholarly project, 5 patients were high risk for OSA. All 6 participants completed the first pretest and posttest. However, only 2 participants completed the second posttest and obtained a sleep study, while the remaining 4 participants refused to answer, limiting the statistical significance of our project. In addition, there was an 11% increase in posttest scores, indicating that our educational video improved the OSA knowledgebase of patients at risk of OSA.