Hospital Wards Should be Quiet at Night?

[GemmaWella81]

Third night into a stay at hospital and I feel like killing people. There's no urgency or care given to keeping the noise down, whether it's nurses talking amongst themselves, machines buzzing, or patients having zero concept of anyone but themselves.

I think there should be a reasonable expectation placed on staff to quash as much noise as possible, within reason as I appreciate a hospital is a working environment. By 4am and no more than 10 min unbroken sleep last night I was thermonuclear with rage, and to pass time began measured the average volume and it was around 55 Db peaking at 68! How is that good for patient health and recovery?

I swear id'd be out of here and recovering quicker if I was able to get some proper shut eye. I've had no choice to listen in on a patient arguing with a nurse about getting iv pain relief vs pill form a minute ago. Nurse was saying preference was a pill as it's cheaper but the patient was begging for iv. In the ensuing back and forth myself and people in beds near me were either woken up or were clearly getting agitated by it. There'll be a consequence now as most of us are in need of pain relief (surgical ward) at some point and that can momentarily knock you out...so when three people now ask for pain relief is it really cost effective then just giving the original patient iv pain relief in the first place?

It's been my first stay in hospital for a long time but I think I remember the ward nurses shussing the hell out of anyone talking or making undue noise. Now it just seems like a free for all and fuck everyone else's comfort.

I'm an HCA and aware of how difficult it can be - we try to move 'noisy' and confused people to the nursing station, any empty room etc to help matters but some events are unavoidable. Changing beds, deteriorating patients and at worst arrests, none of that can be done very quietly unfortuantely. Some stuff you can avoid though, noone should be left to the stage of screaming etc where avoidable (good pain and anxiety management).

However - the nursing staff need to be made aware that they're making a din for no good reason - we have staffrooms to talk in! So I'd say something in the morning if this is a problem.

As a patient I remember an elderly lady shouting at me when I needed help overnight , I needed my bed changed two or three times as was bleeding heavily and they kept taking my obs as I was unwell - awful experience as she was shouting that she was tired. I think she didn't understand at all what was happening but I was mortified!

My DH had his kidney out and he said lack of sleep was the worst bit - poor sod!

When I was in having my twins, one of the midwives had the radio on playing music all night, just outside my room. I was too scared to complain to him face to face, as someone who would play loud reggae music in a ward full of babies and their exhausted new mothers is obviously a total prick.

I've had two major operations in the last five year both with hospital stays and the nurses chatting at full volume kept me awake I was really shocked they made zero effort to be quiet. Beeps, machines, other patients are unavoidable but hearing about the nurses private life at 900 decibels I held was unnecessary

I had the misfortune, during my last stay in hospital, to be in a bed near the nurse's station. One of them was getting married in a few weeks and treated the others (and me) to all the minutest details in a very loud and excited voice. The others chipped in with their experiences while buzzers were ignored with, "Oh, it's only XXX!"

Is anyone talking about an Audi?

I have had a few emergency admissions, on one I was moved about the hospital as beds / spaces became available. At one point I was on a short stay / asessement ward.

The elderly lady next to me was going home and was waiting for son in law to pick up her and daughter. The conversation seemed to go on for hours

Did you say X is on his way?
Yes mum he's fetching the Audi
The car?
The Audi mum, the Audi
But he's bringing the car?
Yes mum, the Audi, the Audi, he's gone to get the Audi

Obviously it was important for the entire ward to know her husband had an Audi. This was still going on when they found me a bed on a proper ward.

On another memorable occasion I finally got to a ward at 5.30am, at 6.00 the lady in the next bed thought it was appropriate to sing hymns.

There should be a criminal defence to killing people in hospital who keep others awake without a good reason. if you are having a cardiac arrest or need a bedpan fair enough, but the bloody Audi and the hymns - patieticide it could be called

It was the nurses/assistants who bothered me last time I was in. They kept the lights on til about 2-3am and talked so loud all night - laughing and joking.

Between that and the girl who kept complaining of severe stomach pain and asking for morphine....then eating pringles and sweets when the nurses left her :s

Agree with everyone about the noise although having been on two seperate children's ward with dd in different hospitals, one was as noisy at night as it was in the day, and in the other you could hear a pin drop. So it can actually be done with care and consideration, it's just a lot don't seem to bother.

Also what is the deal with hospitals ramping the temperatures up so much so that it basically has it's own tropical micro climate? I've always thought that can't be the healthiest atmosphere. Dd's primary school does it as well.

I was in hospital in Febuary, in a private room, behind double doors, off the corridor.

Whenever the Nurses had to see to the Woman in the next room, whatever time of night, they'd be singing on their way in, whilst gloving and gowningvup outside my room.

There'd be full volume laughing at all hours and one night it sounded as though they were playing 'tic'.

The standards on the ward that I was on, had dropped to shockable levels, since being on it, twice before.

One male Nurse seemed to want to continually make the point that the we could wear our own clothes, bearing in mind that I was very ill, needing to sleep during the day and was going for different Scans/X Ray's/having bloods done twice daily and had a Canula in.

The Bed makers were the only professional and efficient behaving ones and the cleaner was the most friendly.

I also was accidentally left of the lunch/tea list and had to go to the hospital shop to buy food. I also had to buy water because the Staff kept saying they were bringing s jug, but after two hours, I gave up, this was on a day that I was supposed to flush the dye out of me.

I didn't struggle filling in the feedback feedback form.

My sister was in hospital recently, in a single room. It was still noisy. She kept shutting the door to try and block it out but the nurse kept opening it.
At about 3am a very drunk woman was admitted (genuine illness, but was also pissed), with her family and it was pandemonium.
There was also an old lady who tried to get into the other patients rooms all night and screamed the place down when they tried to get her back to bed. Think she had dementia.
During the day was just as noisy, and there was an ongoing loud conversation with various nursing staff trying to get the old woman to have a wash. They were still at it when my sister was discharged 3 days later.

DS1 spends two weeks every three months in hospital, I can't stay with him overnight anymore because I just can't function on the tiny amount of sleep I get there.

He's on an iv pump that alarms when it's done. Even on the emptiest of wards I've had that thing going of for 20 mins at a time getting louder and louder before I've had to go and fetch someone to turn it off!

Their response? "Oh when you work here long enough you tend to stop hearing them after a while!"

Yanbu
I've been in hospital for the last three weeks with my four week old DS and the neonate wards are no better. This is young babies with no established sleeping pattern yet. It's noisy, if not all the time, then certainly it can be noisy at any time.

Weekends are the worst. More visitors around so more noise and much fewer staff so much less chance of getting a discharge date. It's very unlikely that on a Sunday I'll be told I take my son home today.

My dad had to observe a patient all night once. The nurses asked him to ring his buzzer when this guy got out of bed or general mischief. He didn't sleep all night watching this ill guy trying to rip out his IV (successfully twice), get out of bed several times and pull his catheter out. (my dad was in for kidney problems! ).

It's horrendous.

The noise and lack of sleep on post natal wards must be a contributing factor as to why women leave so soon after delivery. Women are leaving hospital before their milk supply has come in and only having had maybe one or two latch checks. No wonder the uk has a horrendous BF record.

Private rooms should be mandatory in all departments. Sleep is fundamental to our health. Who pays for it though?

I have no idea why this is allowed. I really don't get it bcs you'd have thought that promoting good sleep wherever possible (no late TV, lights off, whispering expected) would be an incredibly cheap and effective way of helping people to recover.

Have been in hospital in Germany, several times, and in the UK. In Germany it was sometimes disturbed at night but you had the impression that everyone - staff and patients - was at least trying to be quiet and this did make a difference.

OP you have my sympathies!

It's fair enough that there has to be some noise because of essential monitoring and the likes, but some staff just don't care (probably had the care knocked out of them because of shit conditions). I was in hospital for two nights monitoring recently and I could tell you every detail of one staff members upcoming wedding because all of the loud conversations about it were held outside my room door. Including her colleagues singing/humming 'here comes the bride' at 3am for her to practise her walk. Although in that particular ward lack of sleep was pretty much the least of my worries so perhaps the lack of giving a shit about disturbing people (or just lack of giving a shit about people in general) is indicative of how utterly demoralised the staff are.

Last time I was in it was the nurses chatting loudly and patients talking on their phones at stupid o'clock at top volume!

25 years ago at about 10pm someone used to ask if you wanted 'anything to help you sleep? ' and you'd be given a sleeping a tablet.

Last time I was in I had to stay on MAU. Two ladies with dementia kept me awake all night. I know they couldn't help it. At the end of the shift one of the nurses said about me 'yes shes been awake all night, I did offer her cups of tea'. ermmm no, she didnt... maybe in her head

Private rooms in the new hospital here.

though of course not envious at you being in. Hope everyone escapes successfully soon.

I agree that a huge part of recuperating really is rest and peace.

I was in hospital for cluster migraines once and while they sorted out a ward bed I was in a kind of triage ward.

There was a 50 year old man admitted addicted to to alcohol and a heavy smoker with some behavioural issues who wasn't allowed to leave his bed.

He was shouting and screaming abuse all night, I felt so unsafe.

Also an elderly lady who I think had dementia and kept shouting out "No no no no no NOOOOO! Every twenty/thirty minutes.

In a situation where even the sound of my hand dragging on the bed sheet was enough to make me vomit, it was a pretty bad night.

YANBU, I have (luckily) only had 2 hospital stays to date, the first when I was in my early 20s and dh took me in because I suddenly woke up in the night and was vomiting repeatedly with no let up. When admitted it was a mid week night and the staff were horrible to me because they had decided I must be drunk or on drugs it was only when they took my temperature they realised it was something serious... It was suspected appendicitis and I had to have an operation to check and remove if needed. It turned out to be a virus but due to the op I had to stay in. I had a lady with dementia and an oxygen tank in the bed next to me. The tank took up all the room next to my bed so could hardly get out/ have visitors near my bed, she kept shouting all night that I was looking through her curtains and then would get wheeled out to smoke at frequent intervals. I was there 2 nights and in tears by the last night and just wanted to go home. The 2nd was when dd was born and we had to stay for some monitoring. The girl in the bed next to
Me had a violent boyfriend who was not supposed to be allowed to come in but she kept phoning him and asking him to visit, she had loud arguments with her mum about said boyfriend and a social worker who came to see her each day who she blatantly lied to and then laughed about it
On the phone afterwards...she spent the nights moaning about her child
Crying and telling it to shut up rather than feeding/cuddling it etc. My bed was also next to a glass bottle recycling tub so each night a cleaner would
Come and empty it into a bigger one in the room really loudly. I didn't sleep at all for the 3 nights I was there and I am sure this was the root cause of my pnd. I am due 2nd dc in August and dreading a hospital stay...

for you and hope you get better soon. When I was in hospital with ds the night after he was born it was so loud. Not the babies crying but a woman on her phone really loudly all hours! Another lady had so many people there in the day time all shouting, swearing and stinking of fags. I could smell them 3 beds away. You would have thought staff could ask people to quieten down. Apparently not.

Sleep and food are crucial for healing and two things uk hospitals are dreadful at! I wonder how much could be saved if these two things were improved.