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.

I had a 6 day hospital stay earlier this year. By the time I came home I was suffering from sleep paralysis from all the disturbed sleep.It was really horrible and took a while to go away.

I also had a baby last month and spent 2 days on the post natal ward after an EMCS. I got about 2 hours sleep each night (Not in one block) it was absolute hell and definitely slowed my recovery and my bond with the baby compared to my first delivery where I was able to go straight home afterwards and have help overnight from my husband.
If they hadn’t discharged me on the day they did I would have discharged myself because I needed sleep a lot more than I needed the antibiotics. I was convinced I was going to drop / suffocate my baby because I’d had so little rest. It was brutal.

@amoobaa perfectly written 👌

Totally agree with this. When you are So unwell and vulnerable in hospital, you are totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. I am forever grateful to the medical staff who showed me small kindnesses in hospital and I will remember them always with gratitude.
I have to say though that the nighttime staff on my labour ward were awful. I was begging to go home!

It's not a toss up between sleep or treatment. Believe it or not, sick people need both.

OP if you're in for much longer, raise it with the staff. Or just yell out "will you please be quiet, your talking loudly is keeping me awake!"

We pay a LOT for the NHS. It's not a gift. If an element of treatment or care isn't good, let them know.

Still no need to run up and down the wards shouting to each other....

Hope you're getting some sleep OP.

I'm a frequent flier in hospital (multiple stays of 2 weeks at a time throughout my life) so I'm an old hand and have seen it all. I've seen staff being awful, inconsiderate and downright offensive but thankfully more times I've seen them being lovely, compassionate and trying to keep quiet through the nights. It's often patients who make things nosier, like the one who liked to watch game shows blasted out of her iPad all through the night, and then there are the ones who are sadly suffering with dementia and shouting and screaming through no fault of their own, it can be so traumatic for them. You have blokes from the next ward wandering through, confused and shouting and trying to get into your bed. Machines that beep, screech, wail without ceasing. Lights left on all night. People waking you to sort dinner menus. Obs every two hours. I always say I need weeks of rest at home to get over my hospital stay.

My doctor despairs of getting me to come into hospital half the time when I really should because of this exact issue. She’s just accepted I’ll most likely die at home, which I don’t think is a particularly bad thing. But what kind of choice is it? I have a disease where severe fatigue will cause respiratory failure so I can go to the hospital already sick, and then the lack of rest whilst there will make me even more seriously ill. I’ve left hospital before Against Medical Advice when I was hysterical with exhaustion - I was more ill than when I’d entered and I was afraid in my confusion that if I stayed, they were going to end up killing me, because my muscles would just fail. I’m not about to end up intubated just because some staff don’t know how to use fecking “inside” voices at 2am. To answer your question, OP, yes, it’s a serious issue - if you’re not so ill that your body is already keeping you only semi-conscious, they’ll hopefully sedate you vs. risking whether you might or might not get good rest. (Since I already have issues, I’m a shite candidate for sedation).

Yes when I went in for an induction the ward was opposite the doors to the labour ward and all night, every 5 minutes or so, people were pushing them open and leaving them to SLAM shut then tramping down the corridor talking loudly. The night staff on the post labour ward were even worse, they had a radio playing all night…

I went in on Wednesday morning, left on Saturday afternoon and slept two hours in that time.

What jolly larks! Did you snaffle a tin of sardines and ginger pop from matrons cupboard?

From a medical point of view, they have to check your rousability at regular intervals. If they don’t and someone dies because their respiration was impaired due to meds (or illness), then that’s negligence.

My pelvic surgeon knows he can perform major surgery on me one day and I’ll be going home the next because I absolutely loathe staying in hospitals because of the lack of sleep.

I know staff have to do their obs, come to see Vera, who is probably a bit deaf, when she’s pressed her buzzer, try to stop a medical patient, who really shouldn’t be on a surgical ward, from wandering around, and get all their paperwork done, but for the love of god they could do it just that tiny bit quieter. It’s almost like they don’t realise that when everyone one else is quiet noise carries further.

Last time I was in hospital, I was in for 4 days for a spinal cord stimulator trial. That was hell on earth because I wasn’t unwell. There were 4 of us ladies in the same bay, in a neurosurgical ward, all having the same thing done. We were sitting on our beds having a chat at 10.00 one night, we weren’t being loud, when a HCA came in and told us it was bedtime. It was like being on a residential trip with the school. Didn’t stop them banging and clattering about though.

I'm a nurse and I know what you mean. Certain staff members were so arrogant they just didn't gaf. It's like'if im awake, you can all be too'.
Power trip I guess. I used to treat my patients like sleeping babies and tiptoe about.
Now I'm in A&E and nights aren't any different from day but that's kind of necessary there unfortunately

Providing treatment shouldn't be the sole aim of a hospital stay as some have suggested. Patients are in hospital to get better. Getting better involves being able to sleep. By deprioritising sleep the NHS is jeopardising health outcomes and probably prolonging hospital stays. At its worst it will be creating new medical problems, Extreme sleep deprivation on postnatal wards has to be a factor in the high levels of PND we have in the UK.

@Gasmeters yea you can do obs in the dark, use a pen torch, turn the beeps down on your dynamap, use a desk lamp when doing paperwork.
It's about being considerate and at least trying to acknowledge your patients need for rest and sleep

I was recently in hospital after a craniotomy. On a very high dose of steroids that made sleep impossible. Every bloody light on the ward was fully on. I was already photophobic because of my brain tumour. Hell on earth! No wonder the NHS has no money - the electric bill must run into millions. !! Turn.The.Bloody.Lights.Off.

@Ohsugarhoneyicetea that's actually pretty accurate 🙈

Oh and I always turned out the main lights by 9.30/10pm. Bedside lights and torches are fine for IVs etc. this was a 32 bed busy acute surgical ward as well.

It’s not just NHS. I paid privately for an operation that required an overnight stay.

There was one light that shone directly into my room from the foyer (light from day/outside came through overlooking foyer- no external window) - felt like it was angled toward where my bed was positioned.

Outside my room loud talking and laughing - I presumed from night staff.

At 12am someone started to watch an adventure film LOUDLY. If it was night staff or from another room I don’t know but did not comprehend how it was allowed.

Urghhh yes post natal ward noisy hell as if giving birth and being handed a tiny newborn without partner allowed or any visitors wasn't bad enough then they just laugh and chat and bang doors all night. V irritating

I was in a hospital overseas that had notices telling staff to use soft close bins because of the importance of sleep.

I had a mixed experience in the U.K. after a major operation - the staff did obs in a super quiet way on me. But around the staff station they were not quiet at all.

low lighting/ lamps and soft voices is not too much to expect.

The worst place I ever stayed was the childrens ward in a local hospital, with my sick 4 year old, the night staff, some were seeing to sick children being admitted, the rest of the late middle aged men and women, were screeching running up and down the corridor, outside the rooms and small wards. They were an absolute disgrace. The day staff were fine.
One male nurse at night who came in every few hours, to administer meds was horrible and scared me.

This happened every night we were there

Hospitals are dreadful for food and sleep. The two things the human body needs to heal after an illness or trauma are...

Recently had two separate weeks staying at local hospital with dd who was seriously ill. No sleep allowed for us. No curtain, bright lights, banging door, really lous belong from oxygen saturation monitors from asthmatic babies, loud talking/laughing all through the night, police gathered around a bedside opposite chatting all night to annoying delinquent teen, and on top of that I had to set my alarm for regular intervals in the night so that I could remind staff that dds meds were due. I was just so worried about her recovery in the end. Drove me to tears/

Tbf for the money we each pay, the bare minimum is what you get. We pay a lot less per person for healthcare than other developed countries do.