| Nursing students are more susceptible to sleep disturbances. The dormitory life also decreases the quality
of their sleep. Due to the restriction of the use of drugs for the management of sleep disorders, the study was
conducted to investigate the effect of aromatherapy with Citrus aurantium essence on the sleep quality among
nursing students. In this randomized controlled trial, 100 nursing female students, who lived a dormitory life and
met the inclusion criteria, were randomly allocated to the intervention and control group. The intervention group
received aromatherapy with the essence of Citrus aurantium for 15 minutes overnight, for 14 nights, while the
control group received no intervention. The sleep quality of all the students was measured by Pittsburgh Sleep
Quality Index (PSQI) after the intervention in both groups. The data were analyzed using the SPSS 11.5 software
and inferential and descriptive statistics. The obtained results showed that the mean score of sleep quality of the
intervention and control group before the intervention was 7.38 ± 2.12 and 7.19 ± 2.43, respectively, which yielded
no statistically significant difference (p = 0.403); however, after the intervention in the intervention group (3.30 ±
0.97) compared with the control group (7.73 ± 2.64), there was a significant difference (p < 0.001). This means that
the intervention group compared with the control group had better sleep quality. We expect aromatherapy with
the essence of Citrus aurantium, which is a relatively simple, inexpensive, and non-invasive technique with low
side effects, to be used by nursing students residing in dormitory to manage their sleep quality. |