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.

Yanbu.
My dm spends a lot of time in hospital like a yo-yo. She hates the fact that lights are left on and the staff can be pretty loud at times. She’s been on various wards through the years and several different hospitals, so she knows what she’s talking about.
’We've just come to do your obs’. ‘Why aren’t you sleeping well?’

I don't blame hcps for not giving a shot about the general public and leaving to work in Aldi when you've got this delightful thread as a litmus test of how the general public view them. Pay for your own care then

nope
I had a side room after a spinal op because I'm neutropenic. Same reason I get one in a&e

Not giving a shit* not shot

I have only spent one night in a hospital but it was torment and I got no sleep. Now I have private health insurance so I can avoid wards.

I've always wondered this! On my couple of ops and childbirth, and during many many visits to my parents, without fail I've not understood why two basic and free-healers - sleep and fresh air - are not allowed!

One year I was transported daily to and from the hospital for a week to a hotel (for a week) It was fucking bliss. Double bed and even a lovely fry up every morning. The next year there were no rooms at the hotel so I had to stay in a ward. It was awful, for me it wasn't the noise (had ear plugs and a eye thingy) but the heat and single bed.

Hope you get some sleep OP.

I’d just had major spinal surgery & my obs were every 15 mins. Around 1am, I was having a lovely (quiet) chat with the Sister & she was having her tea break with me. First cuppa of the day (in a Tommy Tippee mug as I was immobile). Sister did my obs & said “I’ll have to pop your tea down, don’t panic but we need the crash team.” I was wide awake & chatting, felt fine (god bless fentanyl) but my bp had crashed & she couldn’t get a reading (!) & my respiratory rate was low (and the old ticker was slowing down).

Cue the crash team running in, I’m still away with the fairies & chatting, they did their magic & stabilised me.

It was utterly bizarre to be conscious & having a crash team doing their magic!

After the excitement, my bay were all awake (I was 20, all the others were over 60, they were like wonderful mother hens to me).

So the Sister made a fresh brew for everyone, got out the posh biscuits & a bit of a midnight feast was had! To be fair, the 4 of us had spent most of the day in surgery unconscious, so sleep wasn’t forthcoming for any of us.

I did apologise profusely to the ward for the kerfuffle; they were lovely & one said she quite enjoyed the excitement lol!

When I was moved onto the larger ortho ward (about 24 of us), my next door neighbour took me under her wing, and when I could walk again we’d nip through the man’s ward at midnight (grabbing a few lovely guys, if I’m honest) & escape outside for a sneaky quick cigarette, standing in pjs, the group of us with drip stands & all manner of ortho devices to aid mobility & chat utter shite in the frosty midnight December air.

Sleeping tablets were hoarded to take after our nightly jaunt (given as standard, there were a lot of older ladies having hip replacements & they were given little bells to tinkle if they needed help, so the ting-a-longs went on through the night). It was only 1992, not quite the Stone Age, but it was a very old hospital! And ear plugs were a given to stay vaguely sane.

There were no TVs blaring, mobile phones were still a twinkle in Nokia’s eye, just everyone chatting together & getting on with our recovery as best we could.

One nurse brought in a pile of old Cosmos, which prompted one hip lady (as we called them) to shout over the partition to us young ‘uns that orgasms hadn’t been invented when she was young! And Ethel, always the naughty ringleader of the Hip Ladies, proclaimed she might have felt something with a Yank in 1943 in an air raid shelter, but the all clear siren killed the mood.

I have no idea why I’m rambling. I think hospitals have always been busy, bustling places, and technology is great at keeping you in touch with your loved ones (and TVs joining the noisy throng) but it just makes everything so loud. Add the lovely machines that bleep & ping & the resulting cacophony is hellish & no friend to recovery.

Sleeping pills, ear plugs & an eye mask. Maybe when the NHS get that fictional £350 million a week that was plastered on the side of that ruddy bus in 2016, all patients will get a sleep pack containing the above, just like you’d get on a long flight.

Or you could just read my drivel & it’ll soon bore you to unconsciousness.

Sleep well & hope you feel better soon.

I don't think anyone has mentioned lights. I was in for a week last year and they never put lights out until after midnight.
IV and obs all night, I know it's necessary but they would insist on me drinking gallons of water (as well as being on a fluid drip) all night because BP too low. Then tut because I needed them to help me get to the toilet every half hour🤣.
I went 48 hours with zero sleep, was virtually hallucinating by the end.

Until 2019 Uchl used to give out little sleep packs, also had a notebook pen and a couple
of other things I forget.

might still do them, just haven’t had the pleasure of any stays in there since.

Fabulous post @CentrifugalBumblePuppy

It's the same in private hospitals. I had a room to myself, so thank goodness I could have a window open all night otherwise I would have boiled. But I barely slept as nurses seemed to be in & out every hour or so, checking on me, asking if I didn't want the window closed, etc. I know it's their job but when you're desperate for sleep & you manage to drop off only to be woken up again half an hour later, it gets frustrating.

@CentrifugalBumblePuppy your rambling was a lovely read!

I spent 2 weeks in hospital earlier this year, I smashed my ankle so had two operations. I ended up as an outlier on an ENT ward.

The lights were out by 11, cups
of tea were readily available day or night and the night staff all whispered. Having said that the nightly obs, confused patients and noise was still there but it isn’t a hotel! The worst night I had was when my IV morphine tissued and was leaking under my skin. They didn’t have a trained IV nurse on shift, the pharmacy was delayed sending up extra IV meds and the on call doctor was busy elsewhere. I’d just had 4 hours of major surgery and was in severe pain. I finally got it sorted about 3am.

I was in a side ward with mainly elderly ladies who were hilarious and there was a feeling of camaraderie, we all looked out for each other and we had some laughs. I grabbed sleep when I could get it, often in the afternoon.

Hope you feel better soon.

Not necessarily. I was in an isolation ward when I was undergoing chemo due to neutropenia. And also when I had another mastectomy during lockdown and the breast cancer department was moved to the local Nuffield.

Blissful but boring.

I've spent a lot of time in hospital over the last few years, sometimes for several months at a time and while I fully agree that getting to, and then actually staying asleep on the ward are damn near impossible, there is one particular moment that always makes me smile when I remember it.

There was a lovely lady named Brenda, who was 94 in our bay of 6 women. She was pretty quiet, but very friendly. One night, around 3am, she suddenly sits bolt upright and shouts:

"Nurse! Nurse! Somebody please help! Nurse, I've gone blind, I can't see!"

The Nurse came running.

"I'm blind, ohhh noooooo!" Brenda wailed.

The Nurse turned the bedside lamp on and peered carefully at Brenda, as the old lady continued to weep and wail for the loss of her vision.

"Brenda!" The Nurse shouted, sharply "Brenda! Open your eyes!" 😂

@MaxHodgeheg Ikr, how dare the public expect anything more than the bare minimum for the service they fund through their tax? Bunch of twats.

I work on a stroke ward and we try and be as quiet as possible. When bells ring, we answer quickly to ensure other patients don't get woken up.
Seeing to a patient in a bay is hard though, you sometimes need to turn their light on and speak up a bit.
I got zero sleep when I had my baby. Staff were so noisy. I've been extra careful since those awful nights!

Ridiculous posts.

Not in UK, recently spent two days and nights at my son’s bedside. All staff were quiet, discreet, thoughtful. Virtually silent during the night. Absolutely no need for anyone to be loud.

I got about half an hours sleep a night when in the postnatal ward for 3 nights, following 3 nights of labour. And my baby was sleeping well. It was just ridiculous. I understand they’re understaffed and have a lot to do, but it really was just crazy they kept insisting they keep me in longer until I was better, but the extreme lack of sleep was making me have breathing problems. By the last day I broke down in tears begging them to let me go home sobbing saying how am I supposed to get better if I can’t rest. Once home even though I had to wake to feed I felt a million times better straight away.
I fed your pain OP. Get someone to bring you really good earplugs and eye mask and I hope you get out of there soon.

I was in 6 nights when I had ds, 3 nights before & 3 after & I never got a wink of sleep, I was hallucinating by the time I discharged myself.

This is why I have taken out private health insurance, unless I need heart or brain surgery, I'm going private, it's the total opposite in a private hospital.

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, why are they allowed to get away with it? Most hospitals have protected meal times, why not protected nights?

I remember one night when two nurses happened to meet opposite my bed and stopped to chat loudly, right at the foot of it, for what felt like a lifetime. One of them even half sat on the end of it while they nattered on.

I'm currently in hospital and they seem to love standing outside my door at 2am to shout to each other down the corridor hence why I'm awake now. They also have the radio playing all night at the nurses station and the giggling and squealing when their talking about their home lives at the top of their voice just seems unnecessary I'm not even saying whisper I get they wanna have a chat and a laugh with their colleagues but just talk and laugh at a normal volume

Years ago now the night nurses thought it was funny to hide the SHO's pager. Chattering, and giggling all the while. Eventually he had to get switchboard to page him while he listened for the nois and tracked it down eventually.

He did an early morning round the next day so I asked if he had actually found his pager, he hadn't realised that the whole ward had heard what went on....