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.

Icu is 1-1 but not all private rooms in our hospital. We do use 2 side rooms on our ward that are visible from the nurses station and have to have the doors open.
I guess each hospital is different but from my experience in care all single rooms with the current staffing levels would be dangerous amd possible isolating for lots of people.

Pineapple the Royal is a top university hospital it will cater for very complex patients.

Im sure it will it just seems dangerous to me but im sure they have thought it theough thoroughly. Also patients have often told me they prefer the bays to the rooms as they like talking to others

Our local radio phone in did have elderly people saying they would be lonely. I think the thinking is you will either be well enough to use the day lounges or to ill to be lonely as you will be mostly out of it/ asleep.

We do have 2huge wards in our hosp which are private rooms only and I think quite dangerous due to the staffing level. I think though that the nurses' station should be deserted on these wards and the nurses should have headsets or bleeps so that they can do all notes and admin while eyeballing their patients. That or the rooms should be pie shaped round a circle with the nurse at the centre.

There are newer more specialized areas which are almost all private rooms and they seem quite safe.

A person with a trache in a side room (unless that person is self caring with the trache) on their own is such high risk. I would want a staff member in or just outside the room at all times and when you are caring for 6, 10, 12 patients that's just not possible.

I can only assume those hospitals which have all single rooms have much higher number of staff on duty, I.e 1:1 or 1:2.

There is a group in the middle between too ill to be lonely and well enough to wander to the day rooms. Some people cant get out of bed but arent so ill that they are always asleep there needs to be a compromise

Exactly hester there just isnt enough staff at the moment especially at night. In my opinion there isnt enough staff at night yet as it is

I wonder how many incidents with traches in single rooms there really are? The patients I see seem to do ok as a rule, but I don't know the figures.

Can't high risk fallers be given a pendant thing to use while in hospital? My grandad wears one and it sets his alarm off that rings us, can they not set that up on wards?

Can I ask if Dr's and nurses are allowed to do tests on you when you're asleep? I have experienced multiple times nurses or Dr's doing blood tests or removing and inserting cannulas into various bits of me. Surely that's an example where you wake the patient up?

I also want to apologise to the ladies in the bay with me on my last admission as I scared the medics and it seemed the Dr's kept increasing in seniority around me so what started as a check up by a nurse, ended up with 2 junior doctors and a consultant debating about my treatment

'The hospital was built by Laing O'Rourke on the site of Pembury Hospital at a cost of £226 million. Building work started in 2008.[1] The first phase of the new hospital opened in January 2011, the rest of the hospital opened on 21 September 2011, all services were transferred from the Kent and Sussex Hospital. The new hospital has been denied a "Royal" prefix.[2]

The new hospital is the first acute NHS hospital in Britain where every inpatient has their own room with en-suite facilities, with ceiling to floor windows revealing views over surrounding woodland. The maternity unit will see nearly 100 babies born every week and the A&E department will treat 50,000 patients every year.[1]'

This is my local hospital, it's great to have my own room as an inpatient.

They should have woken you up to get consent firat confucious unless there was a life threatening reason why they needed to carry out a procedure without consent. I have to wake every patient for obs to get consent else i cant touch them unless there is a serious reason why i need to do them anyway.

I remember visiting my mum in a geriatric ward in Kettering General a few years ago where the nurses used to play the local radio programme all day full blast. When my mum complained to the nurses, she was told they had to have something to cheer the place up. I very much admired the patient who couldn't stand it any more and flung the radio out the window. She was suffering from dementia but did what everyone else wanted to do.

God yes. Being trapped in bed with local radio phone in playing = darkest nightmare.

My mum had a horrible experience in hospital - not life-threatening but very distressing, akin to the stories on here.

The next time she went in to hospital I stayed with her 24/7 (or set up a rota so someone was with her all the time). I wrote updates in a little black book - which wasn't to appear threatening but because I needed evidence should things go wrong.

The staff didn't like it - I don't blame them I suppose - but I wasn't going to let the same sort of thing happen to her again. She is traumatised by the first experience. If you think it's bad for the average population then spare a thought for the elderly.

I was too ill to want to talk to people last time I was in hospital. But I still liked seeing things happening in the ward around me. I would only want to be in a single room for elective surgery, for basically healthy people.
I have been in the cardiac ward and hooked up to machines. I did not feel that ill, but I could not leave my bed for long as I had to be continuously monitored by the machines. I would have been very lonely in a single room
I worry policy on this is going to be set by the basically healthy population who very rarely go into hospital, rather than those who are in a lot.

We put traches in single rooms once the patient has stabilised enough. We have 2 double rooms , 4 5 bed rooms, 1 3 bed , and then 9 single rooms - single rooms are usually for severely confused/dangerous , offenders, palliative, end of life, or long term patients (longest I've cared for was over a year).

Generally if it's a new ITU transfer they will be taken to the ward based HDU until they can be stepped down gradually to 5 bed room and then a single room. All the single rooms bar 3 are fully visible from the station and 1 has full video monitoring for safety. I've never felt it unsafe , we 'special' or move quickly to the HDU when they deterioriate. It's less distressing for other patients who get upset during suctioning etc.

Generally though we try to keep similar people together. All the very unwell ladies are together, and the same for the gents. That works out that at least 2 of the 5 bed rooms and the majority of the rest are lights out from 11pm with minimal disturbance. So you always hope anyway.

Cleaty - I agree I have been in hospital 3 times in the last few months . I was in my own room for two of those times. I was too ill to get up, too ill to watch tv or read. I was crying to myself I felt like I needed company.

On the ward the last time I would leave the curtains open and just watch people wander by - it sounds stupid but I felt more cared for and safer that there were nurses around. In fact this was a huge bonus when I suddenly developed sepsis and a nurse walking by the bed to another patient noticed that I was looking a little "peaky". It would have been hours later had I been in a single room.

The only issue I had with that ward was that I am 30 and everyone else on the ward was 80 odd bit since they were basically healthier than me they tried to look after me which was a little embarrassing! But still lovely like having loads of nans- even if once of them didn't have a clue where she was

It does not sound stupid, I know exactly what you mean. One other patient actually did advocate for me. She wasn't happy that they were going to discharge me, I was too ill to complain, and she went and talked to the nurses who got the Dr back to have another look at me.

And hearing and seeing other people around you does feel like company. Even if you are too ill to talk to anyone. The MNer who said if you were well enough to need company, you could go to the day room, I suspect has never been ill like this.

'I suspect if the nurses had helped her brush her teeth and chatted with her for a bit she would have settled'...on a dementia patient.....YOU REALLY HAVE NO IDEA!!!!!

Yup - I wasn't well enough to wander to a day room even when I went home I was in bed for a while!

I have always had really amazing treatment from the nurses and doctors - unless I have very low expectations

The first time I was in in December was the first time I had been in other than to have my children. At one point in my single room they brought sheets in and put them on the chair . For some reason in my half with it state I assumed they were requiring me to change the bed! So I removed my oxygen ticked my drips up under my top and started stripping the bed . No idea why it seemed logical at the time.

Needless to say the nurse walked in halfway through and was like wtf!!! I was introduced swiftly to the concept of "nursing"

Private rooms are not safe for ill patients. Even on ITU, where patients have 1:1 or 1:2 nursing, their care is made safe by being visible.

We are aware of noise. We try to separate day and night time for our patients despite them being so ill that they need 24/7 intervention. We do need some light though. It's no fun trying to set up infusions of potent drugs with barely any light, and even a small dosing error could be fatal.

We are in the process of introducing 'Protected sleep time' in our area. There's a YouTube video about it online. It's partly about nursing behaviour and partly about offering ear plugs, eye masks, etc.

Having said that, this thread has made me think about the noise level on our unit at night. We have very sick patients who need constant monitoring and intervention, but I wonder if we could reduce our noise levels.