Sleep Technician

Aimee Brown

Sleep technicians know the true emotional and health benefits of having a peaceful slumber.

Abad night’s sleep can throw the rest of your life into disorder; work suffers, relationships are tested and energy levels plummet. Sleep technician Lisa Erikli often sees people whose lives have been turned upside down by sleeping disorders, so she understands first-hand the impact it can have.

“People are at rock bottom when they come to see us,” she says. “I’ve had patients that are so exhausted their spouses have to drive them to the centre.” Erikli is branch manager at the Centre for Healthy Sleep in North Ryde, which aims to give people a new lease of life by treating their persistent sleep disorders.

To treat sleeping problems, the centre attaches a facial mask to the patient to be worn each night. It performs a dual function. Not only does it open the airway to enable better airflow while sleeping, but for patients with sleep apnoea, it can record how many times they stop breathing each night.

Erikli, who is a registered nurse, sees patients who have been referred from doctors or recommended to visit the centre. She began her nursing career at Camperdown’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, but moved out of the medical field and into marketing after she had children. Almost four years ago, she heard there was a job available at the centre and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to put her nursing skills back into practice. “t’s really good to have a medical background,” she says.

“t certainly helps me understand the whole picture of a patient.” Her role at the centre is varied. She helps diagnose patients, then fits them with appropriate masks and gadgets and shows them how to use them. She also provides advice and feedback for patients. “Patients use the device for a week, then they come back, we download the information from the machine to a computer and see how they’re going. Sometimes they’ll see immediate changes in their energy levels. They realise what they have actually been suffering.”

Erikli says that seeing such changes in people’s lives is extremely rewarding. “It’s very exciting to see the enormity of what treatment can do for people. Their life improves, relationships improve,” she says. But Erikli says helping people come to terms with the fact that they have to wear the device while they sleep for the rest of their lives can be difficult.

“The most challenging aspect is when I see people who struggle with the treatment; people who have sleep apnoea and don’t like to have anything on their faces while they’re sleeping,” she says. But Erikli says the benefits speak for themselves: “Coming to the decision that they have to use it for the rest of their life is always a bit of a shock at first. But when they get used to it, if they ever go a day without it, they want to go back to using it.”

By Aimee Brown, The Daily Telegraph, June 17, 2006.