Introduction Paper sleep diaries and actigraphy are useful tools in Sleep Medicine to evaluate sleep wake patterns in the home environment over the course of 7–14 days. In our service, the demand for actigraphy far outweighs the available resources. As such the team are investigating using an electronic sleep diary, integrating with actigraphy and simplifying the whole process. The first stage of this process was to ask the stakeholders their opinions of sleep diaries and actigraphy.

Methods Stakeholders were asked about sleep diaries and actigraphy considering all aspects of the process from when to request a referral and organising collection, completing a diary and wearing actigraphy, through to analysing and interpreting results. Questions asked were appropriate to the different stakeholder groups involved. Families and local hospital staff were interviewed and British Paediatric Sleep Society (BPSA) members and families undergoing actigraphy were sent appropriate brief questionnaires relevant to their part of the pathway [Service evaluation SE1347].

Results 47 stakeholders provided feedback. Interviews were conducted with 14 staff, 9 parents and 3 young people. Additional questionnaires were completed by 8 families undergoing actigraphy and 13 BPSA responders. A summary of the most common responses is shown in table 1. Most institutions were issuing sleep diaries and actigraphy to specific patient groups due to limited resources.

Discussion This stakeholder engagement provides useful information to improve the use of sleep diaries and actigraphy within our paediatric clinical setting. If the process can be simplified then more sleep diary and actigraphy usage can occur at the triage stage of the sleep referral process and prevent unnecessary sleep studies, benefitting both families and limited resources. Feedback received confirms the current solution for paediatric sleep diaries and actigraphy is not ideal and there is a need to identify new approaches to increase usability, acceptability and stakeholder’s satisfaction.