To have told the lady off in the bed opposite; hospital stay

[Celticliving]

Hi All

I'm very poorly with asthma and lung infection at the moment and have been in hospital since Sunday.

The poor old lady opposite me has dementia and has been chanting/shouting very loudly the whole time I have been here. It's not bothered me at all, though obviously its difficult to rest - she can't help it though.

Another lady was admitted to the bed next to her yesterday morning. Since then, all she has done is shout "oh, shut up," "FFS" etc. She even asked the nurse how long she has to put up with 'that bloody screaming' for.

She's just walked past my bed, tutting and rolling her eyes.

I said "you know she can't help it right!". Reply; 'Whatever'.

I said "You know that might be you one day". Reply; I don't think so.

She's not even hiding these comments and the poor lady's family are looking pretty upset.

It really isn't. Hospitals should be set up in a way that allows people to rest and recover. If someone is noisy even through no fault of their own then that is going to negatively effect other patients who won't be able to help their feelings about it. There is a reason why noise is used as a form of torture in psychological operations.

I don't understand why there isn't a separate ward for noisy people so others can have peace and quiet. Ideally everyone should have a private room - this is much more common elsewhere. Wards themselves seem positively victorian to me. Just another example of the way the NHS has been allowed to fail rather than modernise.

I agree! If a patient is shouting all the time (and can’t help it) they should be placed in a separate room, the wards are supposed to be places where patients heal, not a waiting room.

People saying the noisy lady needs to be moved need to have a reality check. You do know that there is a shortage of beds in the NHS that patients are being doubled up in side rooms that extra bed spaces are being created in
bays that patients are in trolleys in corridors and God knows what else. On top of this infectious patients immunocompromised pts and those very near death get priority over any single room. Do you think nurses are deliberately leaving a distressed patient in a bay to annoy the other patients? Of course they are not. . And as for suggesting you sedate them to stop them shouting out do you realise this is unethical, sedated patients eat less drink less are incontinent and usually when the sedation wears off revert back to shouting out. I can’t believe how selfish people are on here.

Dementia is a wretched condition.
If someone is climbing into another's bed...thats really horrible.

Dad was in hospital for a knee op once, and the man in the next bed was screaming for 'methadone!!!' all night long.

Dad did tell him to ''Just shut up!'' but it didn't work.

{Surprisingly}

Dad said it was upsetting all the other men on the ward.

But wards are not something you find in a lot of other countries. France for ex. They seem to manage.

I'm just out of hospital after 8 nights. I was very sick and needed a lot of sleep. Like all day and all night. I couldn't read or watch TV or have a conversation I was so sick and exhausted.
While I'm sure the woman can't help her condition, I can tell you I would have not been able to recover if I couldn't have slept or was constantly disturbed. I would have been absolutely out of my mind.
Her needs wouldn't have trumped mine.

I once got ill
at the weekend with my appendix a really bad case- and ended up on a ward with a lot of older people (I was 29), and with a woman shouting out exactly as you said. I can’t stress enough how much upset it caused me because I couldn’t sleep ( was also away from my 6 week old baby) and felt like a bus had run me over post operation. I ended up crying to the doctors and asking to either be moved or I’d go home (not sure how I would have done the latter). I knew the lady couldn’t help it but I also in the situation I was in could t help not tolerating it. My point is just because you can, you do not know the other patients mental health or why physically they are in hospital so perhaps a little compassion on all sides.

People awho are talking about dementia patients in their own rooms and away from others, really have no idea about the condition. They need supervision on a near constant rate, we don't have time to keep popping in to a side room to check noisy / confused patients.

Making a suggestion that isn’t possible eg moving the patient to a side room, doesn’t make someone selfish. So what, exactly, is selfish? Wanting to recuperate in a place where one can sleep without constant shouting? Or in my case, having the curtain opened in the middle of the night and a shoe launched at me?

The nurses really should be managing this. It is not acceptable that all other patients are disturbed and it’s not fair on the lady not being properly looked after that is shouting. So often on these wards other patients are left to help other patients, get them water etc as they are being neglected.

Some of you on here might be a 'shouter' one day. Our patients were all 'normal' people at some point in their lives before their problems kicked in.
Whilst I feel for you being upset as regular patients, it is a balancing act. Lack of staff, beds and resources. We are already over worked, Perhaps some of you want us to stick a broom up our arses and clean the wards too.

@Smellslikesummer your comment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, why are you going on about France? It's a different country with a different health service so completely irrelevant to this. As for everyone else blaming the nurses what do you propose we all do? Genuine suggestions. Can't move them to a side room as unsafe/full of people with infections/immunocompromised/end of life. We can't drug them as it's unethical and - oh yes - illegal and we don't have enough staff for 1 2 1's. So what should we do??

On my last stay (and I’ve been roundly told off for this before so I will make it clear it was a combination of compassion and increasing stress, with a heavy side dose of sympathy for her indignity which was undeserved) a woman was dying of liver failure. I was in for five days and she was bright yellow and moaning loudly or chanting help help help every second and was in such pain she wasn’t sleeping. Eight person ward. None of us said anything but none of us could sleep and I actually got up in the middle of the night trailing my drip to the nurses’ desk to ask if there was a side room she could have because frankly it was pitiful to watch and probably worse for her (she didn’t have family visiting either).
I have however also been on the receiving end of this sort of telling off - I’m a frequent flyer at my local hospital and often there’s a lot of camaraderie on the wards and you get chatting to pass the time. Once I was talking to a friendly woman about familial abuse - we’d both been on the receiving end of less than ideal parents, and another woman who had initially been quite gregarious just suddenly shouted “I know what you’re doing!!!” And proceeded to lecture me for quite a while without quite specifying what I WAS doing. After that it was mainly curtains closed and quite a lot of quiet tears for that stay.

What do you want the staff to do? If there’s no single room available then theres no single room. Do you think this lady is the only one in the hospital? I recently did a bank shift on a ward where there were over 30% of the ward were like this, luckily every patient gets a single room in my hospital but because of bed shortages 8 patients out of 28 were sharing a room. But in most hospitals in the UK its bays and single rooms are at a premium and being used by people who genuinely need them. If you were immunocompromised you wouldn’t want to be moved to a bay of six because 1 lady was shouting out and I doubt you’d want to be in a bay with a patient with C diff.

That lady should absolutely not be in a room with other people. How stupid! I'm afraid I sympathize with the other lady.

One of my relatives lived until they were 98, with mostly a full set of marbles. The last 5 or so years of their life involved many hospital admissions. They were always shoved in a ward of 6 old ladies, and at least 2 and sometimes all 5 would be suffering with various stages of dementia. It was an absolute horror show, which meant my relative got no rest and in turn took twice as long to recover from what ever ailment had landed them in hospital…don’t know what the answer is, but I pray I don’t get it. Truly awful disease.

Can’t really see why sedation would be so bad though - surely easier for all concerned. And controversial maybe, but if death comes quicker, well I can’t see that as a bad thing for the poor souls.

I was in a similar situation recently. I took my blanket and pillow and slept upright in the waiting room. The next day the lady was moved into a private room (why they couldn't have done it at midnight rather than 10am I don't know).

But getting cross with unwell or infirm people doesn’t help, neither does getting cross with the overloaded NHS and their staff for things like waits, bed unavailability etc. I think you were brave to confront the other patient. Sorry to make this two posts, I keep getting a bug which duplicates my text over a paragraph I’ve just written.

I don’t think anyone can suggest anything. But we can answer the op and say, it’s fucking awful being a patient who is very poorly on a ward where they can’t get any rest. It’s not selfish or unkind to say so. And yes, any one of us might be the lady shouting on a ward in years to come but again, it doesn’t make it any less awful for someone experiencing the disturbance now.

I am autistic, and would find this very difficult to experience. I'd like to think I wouldn't say anything, but couldn't guarantee when I'd reach my sensory limit.

Why would my disability be less valid than the woman with dementia?

I dont know what the solution is, but judgement from another patient certainly isn't it.

I find it surprising that she wasn't better pain controlled tbh and I say that as a former Marie Curie nurse, now working in hospital.

Perhaps you’re confusing me with another poster because I’ve never suggested that nurses should do anything. I simply replied to your comment that those complaining were selfish. They aren’t.

Having spent a night on a shared ward with generally thoughtless behaviour going on, I checked myself out early to get some rest. I know some people can't help it but it's horrible for the other unwell people too.

How do you suggest we manage this? I know someone who works with the demented sedation only kicks the can down the road and has a physiological psychological impact on the person sedated, most of the admissions into their specialised ward are when patients have been sedated in care homes because they are noisy and they come in malnourished dehydrated and with pressure sores due to being constantly sedated. I did a agency shift on a ward where there were no side rooms and I was asked to sedate an elderly patient because they were irritating others and also required 1/1 supervision which the hospital wouldn't provide and I refused it is unethical.

Ok let’s say they are lacking in understanding for the situation the NHS is in and also are putting their needs above the needs of a distressed vulnerable patient who cannot speak out for themselves who doesn’t understand the situation they are in as they most likely has some form of dementia and is unable to help what they do.
Personally I think that’s pretty selfish behaviour but you’re welcome to call it something else if it makes you feel better.