Sleep is an essential component in health and the quality of life of individuals, and is affected by multiple facctirs. Sleep disturbance leads to numerous adverse physiologicl and psychological consequences. The purpose of this study is to explore sleep pattaerns and disturbing factors and to inverstigate relative significance of sleep disturbing factors-environmental, physiological and psychological factors-among hospitalized older patients. The ultimate goal is to develop nursing interventions for sleep disturbance by delineating most influencing factor of elderly sleep. The subject of this study were 108 elderly over 65-year-old who were hospitalized at a general hospital in Seoul. Data collection was done from August, 16 to September, 22, 1999 using a self-report questionnaiares and chart review. At the beginning of the interview, subjects. Korean sleep scale, Spielberger'sstate anxiety intentory, Short from geriatric depressionscale, Envieronmentaland Physiological disturbing factors scale developed by the researcher with the consultation of expert and literature review were include in the survey questionnaires. The results were as follows; 1) The subjects' mean age was 70.7, and 63% of subjects were male. 2) The subjects' mean score of Korean sleep scale was 37.09±5.15 (maximum 60). Subjects sleep pattens were as followed; difficulty in falling asleep(64. 3%), trequent awakening (83.3%). getting harder to go back to sleep after arousal during sleep (73.1%), lack of deep sleep(63. 9%), insufficience nocturnal sleep time (62.0%). 3) The most frequently reported sleep-disturbing factors were nocturnal urinary frequency (81.4%) in physiological aspect, noise from very ill patients(47.2%) and verbal sound from other patients or vivtor (47.2%) in environmental aspect. 4) Factors neegatively correlated with level of sleep were, age( r=-.221, p=.022), environ- mental factors (r=-.207, p=.032), anxiety (r=-.391, p=.000), depression (r=-.451 , p=.000), and physical symptoms( r=-.291, p=.002). 5) three sognificant predictive factors of sleep were indentified, depression accounted for 20. 4% pf sleep, nocturnal urinary fraquency, 5.7%, pruritus, 2.9%. Therefore, these three factors accounted for 28. 9% of sleep. In conclusion, the most frequent variables that explain sleep in hospitalized eldery were deprerssion, nocturnal urinary frequency and pruritus. Therefore, it is suggested to alleviate depression and physical comfort in nursing strategy of sleep promotion for the hospitalized elderly.