To think night staff could be a bit quieter

[Mammyloveswine]

I'm currently in hospital and am really very poorly... not helping is the complete lack of sleep due to how fucking noisy it is on a night!

I get nurses need to take obs etc through the night which is disruptive but omg they come bounding in, loudly asking my date of birth yet again and taking my blood pressure, faffing with thermometers etc!

New patient has just been brought in, the porters banged the bloody doors open, loudly chatting away whilst wheeling the bed in... nurse now in with patient and they are loudly laughing about some joke the patient made about how she got her injury.

5am the other morning the night staff all stood right outside our ward having a full briefing in loud daytime voices.. there's no whispering, no attempt at all to be quiet!!

I had to actually ask the nurse the otter night at 10:30pm if they were going to dim the bright fluorescent lights.. she laughed and said "eeeh I forget it's nighttime!".

This is a semi lighthearted rant because I am knackered and poorly and I have had wonderful care since being in.. but omg please just let me sleep a bit overnight!!

Im just out of a private hospital after major surgery. In my Health Authority the NHS presumably pay for private beds to get the list down? I’ve no idea how it works.

The nursing was fabulous and nights were dimly lit and voices were quiet. I was clearly blessed with nurses trained by Florence Nightingale.

OP should complain to the hospital patient liaison service. I did that last year on behalf of a loved one who was in hospital for over a month. They were very caring and responded to say they would remind the ward to keep noise/voices down at night. We can only try. Feedback is important.

You are in hospital and it is a noisy place - even a little smoke detector light above I would think..
It's hellish to sleep. Try ..
Earplugs, airoplane eye masks, a radio to listen to, warm milk and grapes at 9:00 pm and setting yourself up with dim lighting, "No visitors please", curtain closed, earplugs etc again from !:30 - 3:00 pm.

Get some good sunlight if you can in the mornings and later in the afternoons. Are you too poorly to have access to an open window?

Pretty sure it’s an NHS issue. I’ve stayed overnight in private UK hospitals and in US hospitals and had my own private room, all lights were dimmed and quiet hours were set with the staff coming in as quietly as possible to do OBs. I think a major issue is the NHS crams patients into shared wards which is so horrendous when I think about recovering from an illness or surgery and having to be that close to anyone else. It’s gross from an infection control stand point too. It nearly broke me when I was fresh from delivering my baby in the UK. In the US even the ER has separate rooms for each patient! I was able to even sleep last time I was in the ER as I had my own bed in my own side room with lights off.

This “having to have the curtains open” is ridiculous imho and totally for the convenience of staff rather than the well-being of the patients. How do they think virtually every hospital in Europe manages its patients who have individual rooms? And what about the negative health benefits of being deprived of sleep night after night when unwell?

Yep I self discharged against medical advice for this reason pissed me right off

This night 4 weeks ago DH was in hospital recovering from surgery. He was going to have to stay for night 2 if he didn’t pass gas out the back end! He desperately wanted to go home for some sleep, and thankfully he had lift off about 7pm and we were able to get a doc to discharge him.

The staff were pretty quiet and considerate, but they still came in every couple of hours all night to check stuff, so there was very little sleep.

It didn't used to be that way. I was in for two weeks as a kid and it was really quiet at night.

A few years back I was admitting while awaiting tests. They where urgent but I wasn't unwell and I simply told the nurses that I refused over night obs. Thankfully they complied with that request but they weren't happy even though there was no medical need to do them.

OP, you have a say in your care. Ask why your obs need to be taken 2 hourly, and if it is not necessary, demand they are taken less frequently. It's hospital, not prison.

I genuinely think next time I have to stay in hospital it will be the hospital 'experience' that finishes me off..

So far:

• failed to provide pressure relief.
• put in a side room with no call bell
• provided unsuitable food (no way to calculate insulin for it, no way to avoid tons of carbs and the only food with data on it was sugary icecream)
• lights on 24 hours
• no sleep possible - unable to readjust position - pain from positioning - couldn't get out of bed to chair or toilet (the message 'wheelchair user, needs personal care' went awol no matter how many times I told them!)...

I had a massive hypo, despite multiple requests to call next of kin they didn't, fortunately their internet came back on and i got hold of him that way, but when informed of the hypo, no urgency in locating suitable food or indeed, any food...

When someone finally realised me saying 'I need the toilet please can someone take me' genuinely meant 'I can't GET to the toilet, someone HAS to take me'... I got a nurse who had never assisted a larger barely mobile person, who had never used a bed pan, with a bed pan too small... long story short, I pissed all over the floor, bed and myself. Which as you can imagine made me feel SO much better (then sat in pissy clothes for another 9 hours).

I was in for a fast atrial fibrillation that wouldn't piss off for 10 hours, i was kept in longer than necessary due to the total lack of communication between the on duty cardiologist and the nursing staff. I should have been discharged before cardiologist went home, but wasn't and then they didnt want to without triple checking with the cardiologist.

And nasty comments when I eventually lost my shit, terrified they were going to kill me, and discharged myself.

The endless lies really got to me, 'oh you will be given meds and discharged before x finishes, before x pm, before this, that, just a minute, I'll be back in a second....' which went on for HOURS.

For someone with a life limiting heart condition, being stressed out and messed around, unable to rest, unable to trust that they can manage my health as well as or better than I can at home... it's not an environment I feel safe in any longer.

I doubt an open window will help me right now.. and I can't actually walk so that doesn't help anyway.

How awful! You poor thing.

So I asked for something to help me sleep... a doctor would have to prescribe so no...

Asked about an eye mask or earplugs.. why?! To try and block out the noise/light... we're not a hotel and laughing..,

At which point I burst into tears and as I've been in 3 days, no one was taking me seriously re pain until I collapsed yesterday trying to walk to the toilet (I've a major bowel infection), im vomiting everything up, not responding to the antibiotics but they won't change them, my temp is constantly high... I just need to sleep!!!!

I read about an American cardiologist that ended up as a patient on his own hospital. His experience of trying to rest and recover was so awful due to noise at night that when he came back to work he totally reorganised his department.

The result was improved patient outcomes, such was the difference that patients being able to sleep made.

You poor poor thing.

I don’t know anything about what you’re going through but I have to ask- are they actually doing anything?

In other words are you able to go home?

If you have to stay in, in my experience the only way to get what you want in an NHS hospital is to make a massive fuss to every single person who speaks to you. (Sadly.)

Do you have someone who can advocate for you?

I recently spent 5 nights in hospital - induction ward then maternity ward. I wanted to stay in the delivery room because it was so peaceful. I'd spent 2 nights on the induction ward and didn't sleep due to the incessant beeping of machines and if I wasn't woken for obs or gel then someone else was. Baby and I didn't sleep on the maternity ward either because it was so bright and loud day and night. I kept crying and some judgemental midwives thought I was having a breakdown. When we got home, we slept so well and I no longer felt delirious.

There’s no chance of getting a decent night sleep in the hospital!

I had DS last year and he was admitted to NICU. Luckily it was quiet on the postnatal ward so they let me stay for 13 nights so that I could visit DS all times of the day and night. He was quite poorly and I guess the were staff sympathetic because he was full term and no one understood why he was ill.

Anyway, I was there so long that I’d turn off the lights in the room once it hit about 11pm. I’d also close the door. If someone left the door opened then I’d close it again. I frequently told other people on the ward to ‘shh’ and I listened to classical music throughout the night. All whilst recovering from a C Section and then an infection on the wound on top of that🙂

People shouldn’t have to do this though! Nursers and HCA should be a bit more considerate. I understand that they’re just working their usual shift so may not even realise the time but it’s quite frustrating. Don’t even get me started on the noise that people within the same room as you make.

Hope you manage to get some rest and feel better soon OP x

YANBU! 2x Csections and both time I left hospital earlier than recommended because I couldn't sleep at all.
It was nothing to do with the other mothers or babies making noise, totally would have accepted that.
Just the banging, clattering, chatter laughter amongst the midwives/nurses. Sure everyone likes a chat and laugh to break the time up, but maybe not at 3am in the middle of a ward. Take it to the corridor or perhaps use an 'inside voice'!

I was in for an op two years ago and because my blood pressure & temperature were low, they woke me up every 60 minutes to check it.

I reverted to that 'cluster-feeding' state of being 95% asleep for 12 hours a day.

The care was outstanding though and there was nothing really to be done about it. They have to be operational 24/7.

My husband had four nights in hospital earlier this year, and this was something he really suffered from. Mostly it's not medical necessity that drives it, but a sheer lack of consideration for patients. It costs nothing to do things quietly most of the time. He told his consultant the staff needed to spend a night or two on their own ward to see what it was like, and the consultant agreed.

The noise from staff should be kept to a minimum and the loud laughing/joking and banging about isn’t acceptable. I’d definitely complain about that. The lights should be dimmed as much as possible too. It is difficult when they still have a job to do though.

They’ll also be checking your observations more frequently because you are so poorly with an infection and consistently high temp. Your condition could change/deteriorate very quickly and they would be none the wiser if they weren’t checking.

On top of the noise from porters, nurses, equipment etc already mentioned, my absolute bugbear is the televisions at the foot of everyone's beds. I was in a ward of 6 listening to 5 different television programmes as no one uses headphones. This went on all day and late into the night.
No sleep at all!

This is why, after one hospital birth followed by a 5 night stay, I then opted for home delivery! I then managed to avoid hospital stays for over 30 years - until last month when I had unexpected emergency surgery whilst on holiday in Ireland. It was everything the OP describes! Luckily I was put on antiemetics which had the side effect of drowsiness so after the first 36 hours I dozed on and off all day long.

The first time I came out of a hospital admission I felt worse than when I went in 🧟‍♀️

The first thing I pack now is eye mask and ear plugs. See if someone can bring you in some.

When you're not so poorly, ask if you can skip the night obs - you might need to ask the doctors when they do their rounds for permission.