To thing my need for rest in hospital should trump another patients need to have 10 visitors

[Wigwambam10]

Basicly in hospital with kidney infection which is slowly getting better. I have had almost no sleep last night as the women in the next bed had 9 visitors till 11 last night and then had her telly on really loud till 2. She then called someone and was on the phone for a hour.

I asked a nurse last night to talk to her and ask her to be quiet only to be told she can’t do anything as it’s the ladies right.

This morning at 10 all the visitors turned up again and different people have come and gone all day. There have been people practically sat in my cubical and one even tried to sit on the end of my bed.
When DH came to visit me I was in tears as I am so tired and obviously feel ill so he and a word with the ward sister and most of the visitors were told they had to leave. The sister also said that the women will be told to keep the noise down tonight
Well the night staff are on and all the visitors are back. One has almost fallen through my curtain. I have talked one of the nurses who said “the visitors are not doing any harm”. I can tell it’s going to be as bad as last night.
I lost my rag about five minutes ago and shouted to the visitors to shut up and go home and give me some peace. They laughed at me.
I am on the verge of demanding they take out my drip then getting dressed and walking out. I need to sleep so badly. I am sat here with tears streaming down my face. Nurses have seen me but no one cares.

53rdway. Yes, my local hospital surveys patients and visitors all the time about visiting. Overwhelmingly people say they want open visiting. I suspect because they think of themselves and their own visitors as you say.

Where I work it is visiting roughly (don’t want to put myself!) from 11am until 8:30pm. All the notices explaining that then say to speak to ward staff if you need to visit outside these hours, with the assumption this will be allowed. This is because most patients and visitors say they want this, every single time they are surveyed.

I know MN loves to hate ward staff but it’s pretty hard to ask visitors to leave when hospital policy is to encourage them to stay. They can easily refuse. Security are called for the more rowdy ones though, usually in maternity . Not much backing for the nurses there.

Oh I had this when I had my firstborn

Visiting hours (times long forgotten) but we had 2 hours where nobody could visit, in theory !! Woman at a bed, similar situation to you OP
I complained about it . Soon after I was taken to a private room, like you were and spent the next 5 days in peace, unless son was crying but that is normal and natural.
Bliss.

Oh you poor thing, sounds horrendous. It is hard enough to sleep without visitors but that was really bad - 11 pm! I was in hospital last year and I couldn't sleep either between one crazy lady who kept shouting for a cigarette at all hours and another who kept on calling for her husband. I tried to reassure her but she just kept on calling out. I think these people are actually actors employed by the NHS to get us scuttling back home to free the bed, drip trollies trailing behind us! Hope you get to go home soon

I'm really sorry that's disgusting behaviour.

in my experience hospital for a kidney infection is a little bit dramatic

Got a lot of experience have you? Ive been hospitalised several times with a kidney infection. Probably was a little dramatic though.... that is if you call being on IV antibiotics for 10 days, being on morphine for pain & needing several blood trsnsfusions being a little dramatic.

What a fucking stupid comment

in my experience hospital for a kidney infection is a little bit dramatic

What an odd comment. If OP didn't need to be there she wouldn't have been admitted to the hospital. It's not a spa weekend you can book yourself into - a doctor will have decided she needed to be there for observation.

in my experience hospital for a kidney infection is a little bit dramatic

So this is your experience as an admitting doctor? Because you don't get to just demand to be admitted . The OP has also already stated that she has only one kidney so any infection is serious.

Doctor here. Kidney infections (and by that I mean proper pyelonephritis, not a bladder infection or cystitis which are much more minor infections) can lead to sepsis which can kill. Sometimes IV antibiotics are necessary to treat a kidney infection adequately. OP would not have been admitted to hospital if a doctor did not think it necessary. And the point of the thread is about visiting rules, not whether or not someone should have been admitted.

In terms of the visiting I think you're right. Ideally there wouldn't need to be any rules as people would have basic consideration but I think there should at the very least be no loud noise past a certain time in the evening.

Hi YesSheCan. Since you're here........ I've a pain in me ass.... Can you help me Lol no I expect my paediatric brother to be my online gynae half the time - if I had a pound for every time he told me to go to my GP, I'd be a very wealthy woman - and he'd probably be a lot better pleased lol .

How do doctors feel about patient discomfort during nursing?

I know you're only meeting the patients for 5 minutes a day, so do you get a feel for anxiety, distress or discomfort setting in when the nursing isn't right?

Back in the day, a nurse in charge from the ward used to do the rounds with the doctors, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore. Or maybe I'm mixing up different countries.

I think that translated to better nursing care to be honest. Now they just seem to take their nursing leads from how distressed a patient is or what a doctor has written down illegibly (I've tried reading my own charts several times).

In fact, can anyone else comment on the nurse doing the rounds with the doctors? Does that happen anymore?

Also, back in the day, in 1852, when I was born, nurses seemed more concerned with nursing. Now they seem to have a lot more responsibilities and they don't seem to be coping with that. Again, purely from my observations....

I'm always baffled by how inconsiderate or just unthinking people can be in these kind of situations.

We went in to the maternity unit a couple of months ago for reduced fetal movements. We were hooked up to CTG machine in communal ward, but in the bed next to us, the husband of the couple (the woman was taken away for some tests or something at some point) was watching a film on his laptop at top volume. Our midwife could barely hear our baby's heartbeat on the monitor over then sound of explosions from his film. DP and I were both just staggered that someone would sit in a communal ward with pregnant women being monitored, blasting a film out on top volume with no consideration for anyone else. Stick some bloody headphones in. Never in a million years would I or my DP do this, but I suspect it hadn't even occurred to this man that it could disturb others.

By contrast, the couple opposite and their two young children made barely any noise. The children were impeccably behaved and just played quietly together. Sad when a grown man is more disruptive than two children under the age of five!

I think it was easier when you had, cleaners, porters (the guys who wheel you wherever you need to go), nurses and doctors.
Now it seems you have porters, I'm not sure about cleaners exist, HCAs (who seem to take on traditional nurses tasks), nurses (who seem to take on previously doctors tasks) and doctors.
I preferred the good old days.
It's all very complicated now.
You don't bloody know who anyone is or what anyone is doing. Honestly, some loolah could take a trolley and come and claim to do me blood pressure I I'd be none the wiser that he was Joe Soap from the men's ward across the corridor!

The midwife in your case Cellebelly should have given him a stern telling off with that 'nurses stare' that said, 'I'm taking no shit buddy boy'.

Aside, I hope baby is well.

• The midwife in your case Cellebelly should have given him a stern telling off with that 'nurses stare' that said, 'I'm taking no shit buddy boy'. Aside, I hope baby is well.*

She was a young student midwife and a bit uncertain I think. I think my actual community midwife would have sent him away with a flea in his ear, though!

And yes, thanks, baby was fine, just hiding, and now due any day! Hoping to escape the communal ward experience for the birth!

So, for e.g. this has happened me many a time, a HCA is doing your blood pressure and you ask about pain relief and they go 'I'll have to ask a nurse'. Heck woman, I thought you were a nurse!
Back in the day, the nurses knew you better. Now you've Jack and his army all involved.

Oh Christ, I had the most wonderful time in hospital after giving birth, but would I heck do it here!!! No wonder people are opting for home births!

Cripes.! i feel for you. Had similar happen when in with nerve pain, Tumor crushing nerve in my head, was beyond migraine pain childbirth and root canal work put together, no compassion if i moved i threw up.
I’m so sorry for you , but let us know what happens please
Good luck

I presume you mean 1952

No 1852. I've been around a long time.

@almutasakieun I guess back when you were born lots more people were dying of sepsis though, as antibiotics and the importance of hygiene weren't so well understood, Florence Nightingale only being a young slip of a girl etc.

@almutasakieun it's been over ten years since I worked in a hospital (am a GP) so I don't know how it is now but when our teams did ward rounds, that included a nurse. I'd hate to try to do a ward round without any firsthand info from the nurses and just relying on what's in the notes. Have more recently done GP cover in community hospitals and the nurses in one were really helpful in filling me in about the patients but in another (where I'd rocked up for the first time ever and knew nothing about the patients) they kind of assumed I would just get on with it without needing a briefing. I think nursing input on ward rounds is vital.

Sadly I think the best option is to keep making a fuss until the ward staff have to do something about it (either getting rid of the visitors/moving you to a quieter bay or the woman to a single room).

Keep shouting at the visitors to shut up, get really irate so the nurses have to keep coming in to calm you down. You're ill and in pain so you might be tempted to chuck the water from your jug over the intrusive visitors, or some of those paper sick bowls 😊

If you become a management problem, they will have to take action.