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!!

And yet the nurses in German hospitals on Acute ward manage their duties without waking the whole ward. They manage not to talk about their sex lives or how drunk they were at the last leaving do or waking you at 01:00 hours to ask what you want for lunch. The problem is Nurses don't want to be in work during the night and have the mindset that if they are awake then the patients damn well will be too.

Because why not? They aren't the abusers.... there are males giving birth now a days

I've done hundreds of night shifts in hospital and yes, it's pretty noisy.

I think it partially can be explained by the fact there is so much happening at night, especially in some of the wards such as emergency. With patients calling out, machines beeping, bell buzzing, phones, pagers, it hardly seems worth creeping around whispering.

Tbh, (and I'm not saying this is right or a good excuse) I think the attitude of some of the staff comes from the fact that they also feel so tired. They aren't sick, no, but staying up all night makes you feel tired and sick. So they lose empathy for a patient who also feels tired.

I don't think people make noise on purpose, but I've seen some people with the attitude that they don't want to make people to comfortable, as they will want to stay. Now I don't agree with this personally, however I see where the attitude some from because many patients don't want to go home when they medically could.

Gosh men giving birth what an age we live in.

My dh never gave birth what a let down.

@MrsMarzetti i Can only speak for myself and my ward. But we do not wake patients to ask what they want for lunch. That is done after breakfast trays are collected in the morning and order forms sent down with the try breakfast trolley.

I also see how you have missed the part where some of us don’t have time on a night shift for general chit chat, about sex lives or any other topic apart from our work. Like I said our ward has two nurses to care for a whole ward of acute surgical patients in the post op period. We don’t even have a health care assistant over night unless we have a confused patient who requires enhanced care.

You are offensively staying all nurses are inconsiderate. I’m proud to be a nurse. I’m proud of the care I give patients despite very difficult circumstances. I used to not mind the night shift, until I had children and then I really struggled to with them. That along side night shift staffing templates being cut have made me hate my scheduled night shifts but I most certainly do not have a one up all up mentality.

Could you ask for earplugs for tonight? At our local hospitals Acute Medical Assessment unit every patient is asked every night if they need earplugs. And they work amazingly well.

I empathise thoroughly; I was in earlier this year - all my family were there as I had sepsis with multi-organ failure. My main memory is the huge amount of noise but the doctor whispering they'd get me somewhere quiet as I was not expected to live. The incongruency between the noise and the whisper had me convinced I was living with Alice in Wonderland (seriously, bizarre!)

I hope you get some peace and quiet soon so you can quickly recover.

This reminded me of when my mum was first admitted to hospital following a fall. She had Alzheimer’s and so could be awkward and speak her mind! The lady in the next bed was put on the commode while I was there and after a little while, an awful smell came wafting across. My mum said very loudly “ That shit smells foul, what on earth has she been eating!” It was so bad I was gagging!

The same lady also had some form of dementia and kept shouting out and asking my mum to get someone to help her. After a while my mum got fed up with this and shouted out “ shut the f* up or I’ll come over there and thump you!” I had to draw the curtain and move mums chair to the other side of the bed where a really lovely lady said she would chat to mum to distract her while I went off to talk to the doctor.

My mum was a really gentle lady, never swore or shout and would help everyone but Alzheimer’s changed all that!

YANBU. I lost the plot when I spent 3 days in hospital after having my baby via emergency c section. Between all the obs and medication for both my baby and I and the general insane noise all night, and lights on bright all night, I got no sleep whatsoever!
I basically discharged myself at the end because I broke down saying how the hell was I supposed to get better after 3 days in labour and major surgery if I got ZERO sleep!

SAME. I had been lucky night one as there was just one other woman, but first thing next morning two more women were wheeled in - one that snored like a foghorn (including through her newborn screaming) and another who did not stop facetiming every single person she had ever met. I remember piling on the blusher and mascara and forcing myself to walk to the nurses desk to say i wanted to go home as I felt great.

Not to mention, if you do manage to eventually nod off, they start the brekkie at around 7. So you might get 2 hours if you're lucky. I despise hospitals.

Such ridiculous comparisons.

It's like the MNetters who claim that all French women are effortlessly stylish, and no DC in France eats processed food and all the DC are incredibly well behaved.

It's daft. You're talking about entire countries with millions of members.

Yes, there are some cultural differences but it's obviously not true that as a nation, England or the UK is represented by HCPs who are common fuckwits and German hospitals are represented by angels that are always completely professional and considerate.

It's silly.

No really, they're not a patient so no need to stay in hospital... especially overnight.

I’m a doctor. This is a good reminder for us. I usually only get called to a regular ward at night for an emergency, I always think listening to a cardiac arrest (where the patient almost always dies) behind the next curtain sounds so traumatising. But I do try and be quiet, sometimes people move to AMU (admissions ward) before we’ve done all the “clerking” in A&E (basically assessment by the specialty team) and I always feel so guilty having to wake them up to take a history, examine them etc and inevitably wake up the whole bay.

I tried to get some nurses to keep it down on my most recent set of shifts but I wasn’t listened to.

LOL@ males giving birth 😂

That’s a bit unfair and you’ve clearly had a bad experience, but you can’t assume all nurses don’t want to be in work just because they were a bit loud once when you were in.

you have to remember that nurses are human beings too. They’re not robots who will silently go about their duties. They have to talk with each other at times, also it’s tough to switch between shift patterns and they need to stay awake and alert, hard to do when you’re sitting in total silence. Obs need to be taken, poorly patients need caring for, confused patients need patience, understanding and sometimes a middle of the night chat.

im not a nurse but I am a ward based AHP and while I don’t work nights I do know how a ward runs and what needs to be done. Nurses work hard, it’s not an easy job by any means and saying all nurses are inconsiderate because maybe you once met one who talked a bit too loudly is unfair. Also the only time I can imagine anyone asking about lunch in the middle of the night would be if that person was awake having just been admitted to the ward to ensure they got the correct food the next day.

please don’t be so critical and derogatory.

When I had dd1 I thought I was going to end up on a mental ward due to lack of sleep at one point. It's tiring enough being in labour from Wednesday night to Friday night when I gave birth, but then to never get any sleep due to 6 crying babies on the ward and having to stay in due to complications. It's nature's way to sleep when the baby sleeps after you give birth. No chance.

Oh and I could hear the 6 babies in the adjoining ward too

Hospitals are the worst places to sleep. I’ve just gotten out after an 8 days stay and oh my god it was a nightmare. I was so thankful I was deaf because I was able to doze through the noise

I've just been through antenatal classes and they mention the role of oxytocin approximately a million and one times, and tell you "oh, induction isn't as bad as it sounds"...

Well, I know what I'm like. And I know that I'd be angry as fuck after a few days like that.

All the mums I know have been utterly desperate to break out of hospital asap to get some bloody sleep.

How do they prioritise it in France and Germany?

Had many hospital stays (UK) and honestly has massively contributed to mental breakdowns which followed almost every time. It's just unacceptable isn't it.

I've been through this nightmare in hospital too 🙄
Ask a visitor to bring in ear plugs for you. These really help.

Yeah I've done the same before for my own sanity. You can't hope for a good recovery without decent rest.

I believe that this problem actually contributed to my PND with dd1.

Complications meant that we ended up in hospital for four weeks after she was born.

Yes there was the usual stress/anxiety, but it was made so much worse by the sleepless nights. It felt as though I was being tortured.

The nurses just didn’t give a fuck. I understand they had things to do, but just attempting to keep their voices down (I was right next to a station) would have helped. I was also sneered at when I begged them to keep it down a little (after the cackling had finally got to me at 2 am).

And yet the nurses in German hospitals on Acute ward manage their duties without waking the whole ward. They manage not to talk about their sex lives or how drunk they were at the last leaving do or waking you at 01:00 hours to ask what you want for lunch. The problem is Nurses don't want to be in work during the night and have the mindset that if they are awake then the patients damn well will be too

I have done countless nightshifts as an HCA, nurse and a junior dr and can categorically state that nobody has ever been woken at 1am to ask what they want for dinner. If they're new to the ward and been in ED all day they might quite rightly be offered a snack whilst being clerked in but otherwise food orders are always taken mid morning.

I have also never witnessed any nurses/other discussing their sex life at the nurses bay. Never say never but the majority are much too busy and professional to do this.

If we want to play this game as well the German healthcare system also missed a very obvious postnatal complication in a relative of mine causing her to be a whisker from death. It will likely also result in a significantly reduced life expectancy. When she tried to take legal action the medical team lied their backside off to avoid any litigation.

But hey if you are so convinced that the German system is better then feel free to get treated there. I promise the NHS will not be sorry to treat one less patient.

To the lady who sat in urine for 9 hours, I am so sorry to hear you went through this.

I have had the pleasure of many hospital stays right from being a tiny baby and have ended up sitting in excrement for hours, sleep deprived, at the mercy of nurses laughing at me, in fact most of the things mentioned. You do get kind hospital staff too and these people seem like they're sent from heaven.

I think that being poorly lessens tolerence to things and staff should be respectful, especially sleep because the overarching theme of the thread seems to be the helpless feeling of being utterly alone, poorly, emotional, sleep deprived with no one to help communicate this to staff. Staff do ignore call bells if they think you don't actually need anything or when they come you feel small and bothersome so you don't have the balls to ask for something as small as paracetamol.

As an adult, I am probably night nursing staff's worst nightmare as I will ask for quiet and anything I need but as a child/teen, I would just break down and cry. My mother never stayed with me, even as a tiny baby so she "could get some sleep" and I ended up relying on other kind parents in the bay to help at night.

Someone touched upon it upthread, patient relatives also seem as disrepectful as some nurses. Phones up loud all day and night, 8 people round a bed. I could go on, but it maked me feel worse when I had no visitors day after day.