To think night staff could be a bit quieter

That’s a bit unfair and you’ve clearly had a bad experience, but you can’t assume all nurses don’t want to be in work just because they were a bit loud once when you were in.

you have to remember that nurses are human beings too. They’re not robots who will silently go about their duties. They have to talk with each other at times, also it’s tough to switch between shift patterns and they need to stay awake and alert, hard to do when you’re sitting in total silence. Obs need to be taken, poorly patients need caring for, confused patients need patience, understanding and sometimes a middle of the night chat.

im not a nurse but I am a ward based AHP and while I don’t work nights I do know how a ward runs and what needs to be done. Nurses work hard, it’s not an easy job by any means and saying all nurses are inconsiderate because maybe you once met one who talked a bit too loudly is unfair. Also the only time I can imagine anyone asking about lunch in the middle of the night would be if that person was awake having just been admitted to the ward to ensure they got the correct food the next day.

please don’t be so critical and derogatory.

LOL@ males giving birth 😂

I’m a doctor. This is a good reminder for us. I usually only get called to a regular ward at night for an emergency, I always think listening to a cardiac arrest (where the patient almost always dies) behind the next curtain sounds so traumatising. But I do try and be quiet, sometimes people move to AMU (admissions ward) before we’ve done all the “clerking” in A&E (basically assessment by the specialty team) and I always feel so guilty having to wake them up to take a history, examine them etc and inevitably wake up the whole bay.

I tried to get some nurses to keep it down on my most recent set of shifts but I wasn’t listened to.

No really, they're not a patient so no need to stay in hospital... especially overnight.

Such ridiculous comparisons.

It's like the MNetters who claim that all French women are effortlessly stylish, and no DC in France eats processed food and all the DC are incredibly well behaved.

It's daft. You're talking about entire countries with millions of members.

Yes, there are some cultural differences but it's obviously not true that as a nation, England or the UK is represented by HCPs who are common fuckwits and German hospitals are represented by angels that are always completely professional and considerate.

It's silly.

Not to mention, if you do manage to eventually nod off, they start the brekkie at around 7. So you might get 2 hours if you're lucky. I despise hospitals.

SAME. I had been lucky night one as there was just one other woman, but first thing next morning two more women were wheeled in - one that snored like a foghorn (including through her newborn screaming) and another who did not stop facetiming every single person she had ever met. I remember piling on the blusher and mascara and forcing myself to walk to the nurses desk to say i wanted to go home as I felt great.

YANBU. I lost the plot when I spent 3 days in hospital after having my baby via emergency c section. Between all the obs and medication for both my baby and I and the general insane noise all night, and lights on bright all night, I got no sleep whatsoever!
I basically discharged myself at the end because I broke down saying how the hell was I supposed to get better after 3 days in labour and major surgery if I got ZERO sleep!

This reminded me of when my mum was first admitted to hospital following a fall. She had Alzheimer’s and so could be awkward and speak her mind! The lady in the next bed was put on the commode while I was there and after a little while, an awful smell came wafting across. My mum said very loudly “ That shit smells foul, what on earth has she been eating!” It was so bad I was gagging!

The same lady also had some form of dementia and kept shouting out and asking my mum to get someone to help her. After a while my mum got fed up with this and shouted out “ shut the f* up or I’ll come over there and thump you!” I had to draw the curtain and move mums chair to the other side of the bed where a really lovely lady said she would chat to mum to distract her while I went off to talk to the doctor.

My mum was a really gentle lady, never swore or shout and would help everyone but Alzheimer’s changed all that!

Could you ask for earplugs for tonight? At our local hospitals Acute Medical Assessment unit every patient is asked every night if they need earplugs. And they work amazingly well.

I empathise thoroughly; I was in earlier this year - all my family were there as I had sepsis with multi-organ failure. My main memory is the huge amount of noise but the doctor whispering they'd get me somewhere quiet as I was not expected to live. The incongruency between the noise and the whisper had me convinced I was living with Alice in Wonderland (seriously, bizarre!)

I hope you get some peace and quiet soon so you can quickly recover.

@MrsMarzetti i Can only speak for myself and my ward. But we do not wake patients to ask what they want for lunch. That is done after breakfast trays are collected in the morning and order forms sent down with the try breakfast trolley.

I also see how you have missed the part where some of us don’t have time on a night shift for general chit chat, about sex lives or any other topic apart from our work. Like I said our ward has two nurses to care for a whole ward of acute surgical patients in the post op period. We don’t even have a health care assistant over night unless we have a confused patient who requires enhanced care.

You are offensively staying all nurses are inconsiderate. I’m proud to be a nurse. I’m proud of the care I give patients despite very difficult circumstances. I used to not mind the night shift, until I had children and then I really struggled to with them. That along side night shift staffing templates being cut have made me hate my scheduled night shifts but I most certainly do not have a one up all up mentality.

Gosh men giving birth what an age we live in.

My dh never gave birth what a let down.

I've done hundreds of night shifts in hospital and yes, it's pretty noisy.

I think it partially can be explained by the fact there is so much happening at night, especially in some of the wards such as emergency. With patients calling out, machines beeping, bell buzzing, phones, pagers, it hardly seems worth creeping around whispering.

Tbh, (and I'm not saying this is right or a good excuse) I think the attitude of some of the staff comes from the fact that they also feel so tired. They aren't sick, no, but staying up all night makes you feel tired and sick. So they lose empathy for a patient who also feels tired.

I don't think people make noise on purpose, but I've seen some people with the attitude that they don't want to make people to comfortable, as they will want to stay. Now I don't agree with this personally, however I see where the attitude some from because many patients don't want to go home when they medically could.

Because why not? They aren't the abusers.... there are males giving birth now a days

And yet the nurses in German hospitals on Acute ward manage their duties without waking the whole ward. They manage not to talk about their sex lives or how drunk they were at the last leaving do or waking you at 01:00 hours to ask what you want for lunch. The problem is Nurses don't want to be in work during the night and have the mindset that if they are awake then the patients damn well will be too.

You just answered your own question. Because they're the Dad's, so it's not hard to understand, you already understand why.

I never understand how males are allowed on the maternity wards. I know they're the dads, but so many women in vulnerable positions. The food is another topic too. No wonder few heal in hospital

This almost drove me to a breakdown. I'd had a really traumatic birth, and looking back, I wasn't ok after the birth, but that's a different story. I was exposed both top and bottom, and the nurses came smashing through the doors with a new patient who had several family members with her. My curtains got caught in the placing of the new patient bed and came open. So here I am for all to see. I asked the nurse if she could close the curtain, please. Glaring at me, she opened them further. When she left, I managed to get up and close them. All the male visitors have a look of shock on their faces at this demonic looking new mum, and I suspect, hoping their partners didn't look like I did after giving birth. I got back into bed, and the nurse deliberately came back and opened the curtains, but all the way. Now I'm exposed all 3 sides. I didn't have the energy to get up again. I felt so ashamed. This was at around 2am too.

I can still remember my first ever hospital stay many hears ago when the night nurses thought it would be "funny" to hide the junior doctors pager.

There was much noise and laughter as he tried to find it. In the end he had to get switchboard to page him so he could locate it from the sound.

I moaned to the nurse whe she did my obs and apparently they were "teaching him a lesson" because he shouldn't have left it lying around

That sounds horrendous. Can you get a friend to deliver ear plugs and eye mask? The party plus are amazing and very comfortable and, although they’re £60 the drowsy eye masks are brilliant.

I'm a paediatric nurse and if we had a cleft lip and palate list, no one is getting any sleep!

Hope the antibiotics kick in soon and you start to feel better @Mammyloveswine

Southampton hospital did a study that involved big decibel meters in the wards (like those smiley face speed signs) to try and keep things to a reasonable level. The main issue is some nurses can be quiet, can use a torch, can manoeuvre without banging the bed. Others just don’t. And talking at the nurses station or talking in the ward entrance about work is not the same as the change over chit chat and holiday plans etc. no-one expects silence but there are definitely things staff can do to make it easier to sleep. I have spent around 145 nights in hospital over past 2 years across 3 hospitals, so know what I am talking about sadly.

It is tough, I’ve been on both sides
as a patient and as a parent (asthmatic kid) they did shut the bay doors at night and we were allowed lights off. Dr did come in lights on sat my child up in his sleep to examine him poor thing had the fright of his life

also as a nurse (paeds) I used to try to be as quiet as I could there were no doors on the bays so we’d sit quietly doing notes and chatting under our breath but some people just don’t have inside voices no matter how much we tell them to be quiet. Frustrating. Obs wise we do them 0-4 hourly dependant on need and if a child is in for asthma, breathing issues a pocket torch is not appropriate for Obs as you need to be able to see the work of breathing, colour of child etc however we had night lights on at all times, curtains weren’t allowed shut which parents hated. Just hard on either side but hopefully the majority try to be quiet etc