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.

The thing is most people have civilised peaceful homes and people's right to peace, comfidentiality and privacy in hospitals, largely by nursing staff, is wholly disregarded. As a family we don't bellow at each other or from room to room. We walk to within earshot of each other and speak in a quiet, yet audible and civilised tone. This is not how nurses tend to speak to each other or to patients in my experience.

I'm going in for surgery soon and dreading having to stay. Its a second hip replacement, I was admitted in the morning for my first one and got discharged at teatime but this time I've to arrive at 12 for an afternoon surgery and I bet I'll have to stay. I remember when I had DDs, I had a room of my own but they used to barge in at midnight clattering around emptying the bin etc and I was so very exhausted and desperate for sleep, drugged to the eyeballs so I actually was sleepy but it was so noisy.

Oh for goodness sake. If you work in the NHS then put your hand on your heart and tell me there isn’t a lot that needs to be done to improve bedside manner in the NHS. Tell me that all these stories are purely fictitious.

I have been working in the NHS for almost 14 years. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked in the NHS… it gives us no right whatsoever to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that these issues don’t occur on an alarmingly regular basis.

There are incredible people working in the NHS but there are also people who absolutely shouldn’t be anywhere near a caring profession.

You can’t dismiss these experiences purely on the basis that they reveal a very upsetting and uncomfortable truth. We can’t deny reality. We have to face it if there’s ever going to be any hope of making improvements.

There’s no point being offended by the truth. A little empathy wouldn’t go amiss. But I guess that’s the problem isn’t it?

I don’t think I would have coped without the care and kindness shown to me by a midwife on my final night on a postnatal ward. She represents everything that I believe in and I will be forever grateful to her and the many brilliant people I have come across, who really care.

Do we regularly feel like we are undervalued and underpaid? YES

Does that give us the right to deny reality? NO

Right now if you are in a hospital bed you are one of the lucky ones.
it wasn’t always like this.

poor wee old dears

Do you mean women?

OP, Just be glad your on a ward with others.

If you had a private room it would be because they didn't expect you to last the night out...

I couldn’t get my head round the idea of a radio being left on all night in a place where poorly people are trying to sleep!

this sort of behaviour is just totally inappropriate, unprofessional and absolutely needs reporting. The well-being of patients is the most important consideration. Yes, obs must be done during the night but it’s clear that some staff are more considerate than others when it comes to trying to keep it as quiet and quick as possible. It should be part of the skillset of anyone working the night shift.

@mowly77 Yeah they kept crashing into my room at a batshit time too, for obs, and to ask me what I wanted for lunch (and this was at 6.30am!) I had drifted off into my 3rd twenty minute cat nap and they woke me at 6.30am, to ask me to fill in my lunch request.

Funnily enough, when I needed them (like when my IV was malfunctioning, and was screeching loudly at midnight,) they didn't come, despite me ringing my bell again and again. I waited 20 minutes, and I had to drag myself down the ward. I got bollocked by a shirty nurse who was about 20, and told they DO have other patients. Said nurse was nattering to her pal about the party they were having on Friday.

I felt ignored, and not listened to, and irate and fucked off in my 2 nights/3 days in hospital, and I will have to be unconscious before I ever go to hospital again. I felt like nobody really listened to me. Hell will freeze over before I will go back into hospital voluntarily.

I am ALSO sick of this 'NHS is FREE' line which is rubbish, and although I am grateful we have such a system, it should not immune to criticism, and neither should the people who work for it. We need to get the 'NHS can do no wrong' mindset out of our heads. They can, and they HAVE done.

"you're" - before the grammar police come for me...

My battery is dying so I might disappear.

Goodnight all

Nobody occupying a hospital bed is lucky.

Some people are suffering delays to essential treatment and are unlucky. The same people who locked down at the extortion of the NHS blog during Covid and for whom the NHS was too slow to unlock.

Emergency C section due to pre eclampsia, baby in SCBU, spent 48 hours on recovery due to being very ill then moved to general post natal ward. They woke me up to ask if I needed a sleeping tablet. Next three babies all by C section I paid for a side room, nothing fancy just a bed and a wash basin but much quieter, so quiet in fact that they forgot to offer me food on a couple of occasions and I had to ask for a meal.

Yes I'm a delay but also unwell.

Night night Hope you manage to get SOME sleep!

Absolutely this.

As well as those who shouldn’t be doing the job there are some amazing staff in hospitals from the cleaners all the way up.

The bad ones make things harder for everyone ime including their own colleagues who wonder why they bother working there anymore and leave. And from what I understand it’s easier for us patients to compLain and of course congratulate than it is whistleblowing.

If we all ignore the shit that happens then how will things change for the better? We need to sleep. Sleep deprivation is a known form of torture and a lack of sleep really fucks with your mental health.

Be thankful ??

Its that attitude that's grinding this country into the ground. We pay taxes for the NHS, in the 4th richest country on Earth we have to be grateful just to have a bed ??

Fuck that. Anyway OP, ask for sleeping tablet, tell them you're not able to get any sleep and its making you ill, they'll give it to you. If you don't ask, you dont get.

I love these threads because you can tell which ones are complete bullshit.

Taking a lunch order at 1am? Yeah right.

@Thesefeetaremadeforwalking There are reasons for being in a side room
other than you’re about to shuffle off this mortal coil! Being CEV for example so
not in the germ swamp of the ward.

although, and I kid you not, when I was in my side room I heard an old boy being (noisily) admitted to the side room next to mine. The nurse made some comment about it or other and I heard him say “it’s ok, my wife died in this room actually” 😳

Lady who appears to be a senior nurse has just walked around performing a check on every patient really quietly. She whispered to me and I whispered back and said thank you very much.

Shout out to her, so that I can leave this thread with some love. Thank you lovely nurse.

It would be so much better if everywhere had single cubicles, still not ideal but much easier to sleep then
Hope you are better and home soon

Shout out to her, so that I can leave this thread with some love.

No don't do that. You'll wake everyone up 😂

Its a light sleeping pill. Magic. Just ask for a zopiclone

You have my every sympathy, it’s awful. But while they all go on about ‘care’, you’re actually there for treatment of some
sort. Which is a) a job of work and b) not rest and nourishing meals. That can be done at home. If a good night’s sleep is of more benefit than whatever they are doing to you in there, you wouldn’t need to be an inpatient. Hospitals are not for convalescing.

it’s still awful though. I hope you get out soon.

Must remember this the next time and I am given a side room. 🙄

I am in at the moment. Had major surgery wed and came out of intensive care onto the ward this morning.
It's the worst time EVER- was refused a wash all day and am pissing sweat. If I didn't have three drains in I would probably hotfoot it down the motorway home.
It's been awful and I am supposed to be here for at least 2-3 weeks. That will not be happening. Am going to ask for a transfer locally. Was in tears yesterday and today. Not like me at all.