Why don't nhs night staff want you to sleep?

[ICaughtTonsillitisFromAFriendsKid]

Sleep is a great healer.
So why is everything done to keep ward patients awake all night? (Well it feels that way)

In the day the wonderful staff are very kind, but overnight, why no whispering, at all? Not even stage whispering? I've just staggered out of bed trying not to rip out my cathetera and canula to pull the bible sheet curtain round a bit, but everyone else is left with curtains pushed back to the walls.

Everyone is so kind and happy to help, I don't even want to say anything, but I'm just exhausted, as are all of these very poorly ladies.

It seems the doctors are not too bad at whispering, I must concede.

25 years ago my then 12 year old daughter was on a 6 bed mixed ward with an old guy who shouted all night and walked around naked as soon as the staff's backs were turned and 4 very old ladies who all seemed to have dementia one of whom died during the second night, poor girl was presctically hysterical after second night and we took her home against medical advise.

@amoobaa

I feel you!! My postnatal ward was genuinely embarrassing. I'd had a 45 hour labour with next to no sleep and my son was born ar 10.02 am so that's two nights without any quality sleep!! Got to the ward around 1pm, but...visitors. Didn't manage to nod off till about 9pm, but was woken by two extremely disrespectful ladies on a 6 woman ward...one was on her phone (which was on speaker) conversing very loudly in French. The other was ringing the alert bell every five minutes with apparent problems with her DC...despite there being no obvious issues. I felt paranoid when my baby cried :(. Couldn't wait to get the hell out of there tbh!!

My sympathies OP I had a similar experience and then one day when I dozed off in the afternoon between visiting hours the nurse came over and pricked my finger to do my blood sugars because I was asleep!

This threads gone right down hill.

How are you getting on OP have you managed to source some ear plugs? I do hope you get better and out soon.

My DF was in hospital awaiting major heart surgery and could not get a nights sleep. We were extremely worried something was going to happen before he had the surgery as he was so stressed and upset by the lack of sleep. He rang my DM up regularly in the middle of the night in tears. It was awful.

I remember it when i had my first DC I was up all night in labour then the next two night on the postnatal ward. I literally did not sleep a single second them 3 nights. I left hospital in a terrible state. I think it's appalling that more isn't done to somehow facilitate sleep. With my second DC I didn't have to stay the night the relief was huge.

When my DS was 1 he was admitted during Covid time for one night so I obviously stayed in with him. We were deemed a covid risk so put in a private room. It was the one time I was happy to be deemed a covid risk!

My husband brought me some headphones so I've been able to listen to some podcasts and a film. I miss my children desperately, but that's a different issue.
Thank you for asking :-)

Unfortunately hospital wards aren’t fantastic for actually resting. Providing treatment yes, sleeping no. The wards I’ve worked on as a student nurse were generally ok, the staff on nights once the IVs were done etc weren’t particularly loud and for the most part they definitely wanted the patients to sleep. It was the transfers and other patients that made it noisy for whatever reason. Having shared bays makes it worse too, as you’ll have people who snore or who watch TV/are on the phone. Or you may have an acutely confused patient in the bay, then no-one gets any sleep. Individual rooms would be wonderful, but unfortunately I doubt will ever happen unless privatised. Obs are important for the most part, but doing obs at 5am on patients who’d had their obs done just before bed and were NEWs of a 0 was OTT. Sorry you’re not getting much sleep OP.

There is something fundamentally wrong when, within 40 years, Hospital Wards can go from places of quiet at night (except for the occasional distressed, dying or demented patient or even me miaowing like a cat as the pain was so bad) to the 24hr mayhem they seem to be now - with no time for care, kindness or sleep.

I do not see the past through rose-tinted glasses - twaz the Consultant who did me lifelong harm and the Nurses who cared for me through it, but back then they couldn't challenge the Consultant or Registrars.

Another thing I have found, unrelated but possibly connected with the 'bullying culture' that many NHS Staff on MN have referred to; I have a sister who was a Diploma Nurse and finally got accepted on a paid-salary degree conversion. And since then it's like she's had a personality transplant - a big bully in caring clothes. And actually really quite horrible - not the sister I knew for nearly 40 years - I have suspected the NHS Bullying Culture as the cause and this might be connected to the current lack of kindness in the nurses attitude towards patients.

That seems really unprofessional to me..if it happened to a relative of mine i:d be tempted lodge a complaint!

Hi
I am a Children's Nurse. We have to do regular observations on the children day and night.
Me and all the nurses I work with try to be quiet etc. I have had parents and patients make a racket and I have had to tell them to be quiet.
Working for the NHS is so hard especially at present with the cut backs etc. Just ask the staff to talk quieter, we are all humans.

Yes! My last stay was in a cancer ward for 4 days. We all had IV lines in which beeped when completed (nothing anyone could do about that). And I think everyone was getting obs done (again that’s what was needed - not like they’re doing them for fun)
but when someone came to do obs on 1 person they didn’t stop the beeping on other machines. Why??
And most of all why oh why did the lights go on full at 6am every morning. I had a searchlight strength light over my bed. Even my lovely eye marks couldn’t blot that out! If we’re all sleeping why not let us sleep! I was right next to a huge window with no curtains, not like I was likely to get confused between night and day.

i didn’t complain as the staff were lovely and, you know, trying to save our lives, so I would have felt awkward complaining, but it was a massive factor in telling them that there was no way on earth I was staying for the 2 weeks the doctor said I should be staying for.

@MercuryOnTheRise hope you don’t need us NHS staff any time soon, who would want someone so selfish and thoughtless caring for their every whim and seeing to their personal needs and hygiene!! 😡😡

I remember being very pleased with myself that I was able to check peoples Obs without waking them, very quiet and no lights turned on, until I found a blokes hand round my throat, he was a little perturbed being checked in the dark and went on the defensive, we had a little quiet chuckle when he realised who I was and had let go.

Eek!

The problem is that we have wards in hospitals, not enough private rooms, poorly built, cheap hospitals which just aren’t designed for night vs day.
I don’t blame the staff for that.

Ive stayed in hospital four times. First time I had my own room. It was great. Second time, I was on a ward. Noisy. I’d just had my second child and needed sleep but couldn’t.

third time was ok - luckily only one night. Again noisy but not too bad.

fourth time was recently. DS was kept in after an operation on a day ward for kids so we were the only ones. Nurse came in quietly in the night to do observations. It seemed so much quieter I think because it was a childrens ward.

But it really struck me how underfunded the NHS is. Paper thin walls, creaking facilities. It’s so sad just how the government have allowed it to rot. And as we have seen with other services they’ve privatised, it won’t get better with private investment.

Half the reason I stopped working nights, they appear offended when you tell them to shush - perennial problem asked matron to send emails but everyone ignores them, porters dragging ridiculous trolleys around at 04:00, earplugs and eye masks the only option!

I've often wondered about this. I've experienced some excellent postnatal but I remember being surprised at the early start with my 2nd baby. On a ward with 5 others, and with 6 brand new babies crying at intervals all night we had all been awake most of the night (as must be the norm). It was finally quiet and all 12 mums and babies were sleeping and the nurse yanked open the curtains to let the bright June sunlight in and singing 'wakey wakey'. At 5.15?? Why?!

I had my first DC 45 years ago in a tiny country maternity unit, ruled by a tyrannical old-fashioned midwife (no DC, not married). She maintained that childbirth was no worse than a bad period pain, and was known to slap a screaming woman in labour to shut her up, and to avoid disturbing others. She despised educated young mothers who had read up about labour and CB. There was no oxygen left in the tanks for the gas-and-air I needed for the long second stage. But. In her book, once baby had arrived, mothers came first. Happy, rested mothers=happy babies. Babies remained in the nursery from 9 pm till 7 am. Mothers HAD to get a good night's sleep. Obs were done in silence, with a torch. There was no cackling from the nurses, no radios, and it was before the days of mobiles/ipads. Food was cooked from scratch by a jolly middle-aged lady in the hospital kitchen-3 square meals a day, including lots of fresh vegetables, home made cakes and muffins at morning and afternoon tea. Any mother who looked tired was sent off to a quiet little sunny annexe, where she could spend the day sleeping while the nurses looked after the baby and brought him/her for feeding every 4 hours. A mother was entitled to 14 days in hospital by law, back then, so that she left with her baby confident, bf well established, and above all, well-rested. I just don't understand why there is no consideration for young mums and babies - just in and out, no time for learning routines and getting bf sorted. It's the best investment of money in any health system, to get mothers and babies bonded and happy.

I think sadly you and other people are projecting your experiences (and prejudices) as a deliberate policy.

Hope you get some rest. Have to say the last time I gave birth in hospital made me never want to have any more children. I will not go back into hospital unless forced. Surgical staff, anesthetists, consultants, doctors..amazing..care on the ward after…awful..never do I want to be there again .

A cardiologist in the US ended up a patient in his own icu. His experience of disturbed sleep due to loud shift changes etc impacted his recovery. So he implemented changes at his hospital to help his patients get the sleep they needed. It hadn’t occurred to him how awful it was until he experienced it.

I had a spell in hospital four years ago and I told friends it was as noisy as Heathrow Airport. But it was the machines that made the noise, not the staff and occasionally the patients. Even though it was difficult to sleep I was looked after with great care and kindness. I think it depends on who you get!

I have to disagree with the private hospitals being quieter at night than NHS hospitals! I went private to have a hysterectomy three years ago. The night nurse was ridiculously noisy, banging the door against the wall of my room every time she came in for obs through the night, switching on the overhead lights when the bedside light was bright enough, and basically shouting at me like I was old, decrepit and deaf. I was 38!

I’ve heard there have been studies that say that staying on an open ward is better for morale than a private room. Is it really though?!?

I’ve thankfully only needed to stay overnight once but had to stay in a double room with another patient. I found the lack of privacy difficult and having to be so vulnerable in front of a stranger, even though they were vulnerable themselves.

As a midwife on a post natal/antenatal ward, I and my colleagues try our best to let women sleep as much as we can but unfortunately things happen that often prevent that. For example I have to check someone's blood pressure overnight if they are pre eclamptic, if I don't and their blood pressure is sky high by the morning and they become seriously ill then I've not done my job, we get admissions 24/7, emergencies happen 24/7,babies need checks overnight, other women buzz to request assistance with feeding or pain relief or to be reviewed as part of the induction process and I need to be able to see and also talk to them and monitor both them and the baby, some people become very ill and I need a doctor to come and review them, some need iv medication and I need to be able to see to set that up etc...

Generally I try my best to allow people to get as much sleep as possible as I agree it's crucial to recovery, but it's often impossible given the reasons above. I also try to keep the main lights off in a shared bay for as long as possible and the breakfast round where I work is 7am, which isn't too bad.

We honestly ďo try to care for women and babies but the care for one woman might unfortunately be at the detriment of a good sleep for another. I wish there was a better way but there just isn't.😔😪

Where I work, there is the real potential that women or babies might become very ill or even die, and there are genuine reasons they are in hospital. If I wasn't carrying out checks on them, even if it is in the middle of the night, I would be failing and not doing my job.