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!!

NHS don’t have the resources to take patients on a wonder outside. If your parents were able to be taken outside you could of done it yourself.

Noise is a massive problem in hospitals. Please, please put in a formal complaint about it. The more people complain the more likely something will be done. Also, write to the papers, write to your MP. There is plenty of research that proves that noise in hospitals is a problem - but nothing seems to get done. Let's hope that some nhs managers read this post and actually address this issue.

@Lobelia123

Settle down and find somethign worthwhile to pick a fight over, but find someone else to have your keyboard tussle with

I'm not combative. You are accusing me of immaturity, picking fights, putting words into your mouth etc, and I don't mind because your little ego defences are an irrelevance to the thread.

@Mammyloveswine take no notice. You've got a valid point; nobody needs to be noisy whilst they get on with routine work. Sorry for the mini derail here!

if he didn’t pass gas out the back end!

Do you mean fart? 😂😂

YANBU. I was in hospital for a week for a week recently with sepsis and the nurses were so, so loud - loud, animated conversations right by my bed, shrieking with laughter, shouting to their colleagues on the other side of the ward... yes I know it's their normal work shift but FFS they must realise the impact on the patients who they're meant to be caring for?? It's not that hard to keep your voices down a bit, I wouldn't even make that much noise in an open plan office because I wouldn't want to disturb my working colleagues, let alone a room full of very sick people! ! It was annoying because the actual care I was receiving was great but it was all coloured by the impact of having no sleep and burning resentment against the night shift.

For the first three nights I managed maybe one or max two hours of crappy semi-sleep a night and by the end of it I was almost constantly in tears, shaking with exhaustion and on the verge of discharging myself even though it wasn't safe to do so because the lack of sleep was making me feel so much worse. I also have some quite severe mental health issues and the stress of it all was pushing me to the brink. I also asked for something to help me sleep (I have previously been prescribed zopiclone) but this was refused for reasons unknown.

Thankfully after the third night the doctors decided my form of sepsis was too contagious to be on the ward and I got a private room. I was obviously still being woken up for OBs and to have my drip changed etc which is of course necessary and absolutely fine, but the peace and quiet otherwise saved my sanity.

Phew, rant over 😅. Fingers crossed for your speedy recovery OP x

@Lobelia123 are you a nurse?

Of course you have no control of the noise of other patients but do you not think it’s inconsiderate for nurses to sit at a nurse station talking loudly and laughing in the middle of the night?

This could explain your obs. If your temp is high and most likely a few others due to being in pain and having an infection, the protocol staff will follow would state the frequency of the obs. You can decline them of course, but it would be standard on wards in my trust to still wake and ask every time the protocol says they are required (which sounds like 2 hourly in your area). Obs (amongst other things) are on targets by wards according to protocol, and failing to meet these targets can result in lowered budgets for that ward specifically, so staff are having to complete them as stated or they are pulled in by management. If your temp is consistently high too, they cant leave it unchecked for a whole night while your sleep, they have to regularly check. Its awful having sleep interrupted so frequently, but nurses and HCA's are just following the protocol, and even if just one area is out of range, all obs have to be rechecked like your blood pressure too.

Eye mask, ear plugs etc all help, but the hospital cant provide these things for you - can a relative bring them in?

I did a report on sleeping in acute hospital settings back in my uni days, and its awful, i hate waking people, but alot of the time it is unavoidable. However, staff noise and lighting should be reduced once night time meds are done, it should be standard. I would ask to speak to the ward manager during the day, quite often there isnt management on at night. Explain how you are feeling, that you havent slept in 3 days, that medication as simple as paracetamol when you have a high temperature is taking 2+ hours, acknowledge your understand its a 24 hour job and theres going to be noise, but ask if theres anything that they can do to help you sleep.

Zopiclone requires a dr to prescribe which is often a nightmare on nights, but you can ask for them to see if someone can prescribe it today so you have the prescription ready for the night - or if your have a dr review today ask them yourself and explain you are getting no sleep and generally the drs are agreeable if it has been a few days. Then at evening meds round, ask the nurse to double check it has been added to you prescription ready for the night meds round so theres time to resolve it if it hasnt.

I had a baby at Christmas. The postnatal
ward was actually fine, relatively quiet but at 1am on Christmas Eve the nurses started belting out jingle bells and shaking a tambourine then cackled for about half an hour.
cue babies and mums woken up immediately.
if I’d been able to walk after my c section I would have gone round to the desk and murdered someone while humming jingle bells myself.
and by murdered I mean ask meekly if they could keep the noise down 😂

Most people don't require this

God all the above!

Can i just add - clanging fucking bin lids 😡

On the induction ward (6 beds) a few years ago my bed was right next to the loo door and the bin for hand towels was at the end of my bed for some god damn reason.

EVERY TIME someone went to the loo, day or night, and every time someone wanted to put anything in the bin ...

CLANG !!!!!

I was so tired and weepy and desperate for sleep before the third night (waiting for a delivery suite to become available) that in the evening i packed my stuff to go home, while DH and midwives paniced and flapped about at the bottom of the bed.
Magically a bed became available before i got out of the main doors.

Can't sleep and terrible food (and in my last hospital stay the fridge door fell off on the patients room so couldn't even store our own food). It's crazy and counterproductive.

It is shockingly bad OP. So many bad practices. It must set people’s recovery back by days. I just hope you get well quickly so you can go home asap.

My lowest point was when they asked my mother if I was mentally unwell and she said, no. She hasn't slept for three nights.

This is so true OP, they're so noisy...chatting and waking you up, even in the children's ward, waking the little ones up every hour. They don't have matrons anymore do they? Someone to tell them to please shut up. Also they other people in the ward, on their bloody phones all night, tapping and chatting...i am angry on your behalf..can you tell?!

It's funny how the NHS loathes 'frequent flyers' but ensures that hospitals only work for those who have stayed in them before.
I don't know if it's due to first name, last name or NHS number, but in my recent stays, I've been moved several times at midnight with no warning, arriving groggy in a new location that gives no clue as to its ward or unit name or number.
A leaflet or a webpage for a first-time in-patient would greatly reduce stress and let patients get the much-needed rest that will help their recovery.
Sadly, not enough room to talk about the 12 to 24 hour delays in discharge for patients requiring no care arrangements - almost as though there isn't a bed shortage.

YANBU, I've always said that the worse place to recover is hospital! It's noisy, boiling hot and there's a light on somewhere. And don't get me started on waking me up for obs at 6:30am when breakfast isn't served for at least another hour. I did a night in a private hospital where I had my own room and that was better as there was no noise from other patients and I could have the window open (the nurse was convinced I must have a temperature because my room was apparently so cold so clearly they weren't used to fresh air!) but there was still light coming in under the door, there were buzzers going off and staff talking outside in the corridor.

There are matrons, you wouldnt really see a matron at night though, and very infrequently n the wards, they are more like department managers that oversee recruitment and budgets rather than actually on the wards ensuring standards are met.

When I had dd1 I was woken up every hour or so to check blood pressure before and after her birth for 4 days. It was so tiring. Then they moved me to a ward day 5 with 4 beds. They put me alone in there with closed doors and a sign telling no one to disturb me so I could sleep. It was weird but nice and quiet.

With dd2 I had ear phones, ear plugs and my own pillow to help me sleep well. It’s horrible being woken so frequently.

It's insane. You need sleep, good food, a calm environment and fresh air to get better. Hospitals don't give you any of this.

DS was in hospital earlier this year, even in a private room I could only sleep 2-3 hours a night because of the noise. He'd get woken twice a night for medication that I then found out could be given in daylight hours.

Can you put white noise or calming music on headphones? Might help

No that's not how it works

Do you walk around on tiptoe and whisper on your work shifts?

Allowing patients to sleep is actually a part of the care they must provide. If they don't keep quiet, they do not fulfil their professional responsibilities.

Id rather they be awake and alert

And they must, along with being as quiet as possible.

How awful it is that we have to accept the low standards of care in NHS.

They've at least kept our ward lights dimmed this morning in acknowledgement of what a fucking car crash last night was! The staff nurse actually apologised and did say "last night was a bit ridiculous wasn't it? Hope you can rest up a bit this morning".

I had a night in a high dependency unit and the night staff were awful. They talked so loudly all night that I heard every conversation. I ended up with a raging migraine and got 1 hours sleep at about 4.30am through sheer exhaustion.

Thats great @Mammyloveswine. Most people are not assholes or trying to deliberately keep you up or disturb you, and its great that the ward nurse acknowledged it was a rough night - probably just as much for them as for you.

I've had exactly the same experience. Loud shrieking and laughing from the nurses, doors banging, bin lids banging. When you're already feeling vulnerable the obvious lack of basic consideration can be frightening. There seems to be little care in some of these caring professions.

They also lied in my notes. I was in for 5 weeks on a very noisy ward and the lack of sleep and stress from the noise was making me dangerously ill. I complained (nicely) every day and kept saying that I had got no sleep and it was making me ill. I got wheeled to a scan and they gave me my notes to hold. I read them and every single morning they had recorded "patient slept well". 😡