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Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

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Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#41

Post by pishpash »

swsieber wrote: post #28
duxup wrote: post #4

When my wife was in the hospital after the birth of both our two kids (premature so they weren't in the room with her to care for, they were in the NICU).... I chose to go home to sleep as the nurses just came and went endlessly. Someone had to get sleep. Then my oldest son was in the hospital for a while. He was sick so I wasn't too surprised he was napping all the time until spent a few nights sleeping at the hospi…

There are preliminary results showing that when the NICU dims it's lights during the day and goes even darker at night babies recover faster. 5 weeks faster on average. (That's from "Why We Sleep")

Sleep is the best recovery. If everybody got enough sleep there'd be fewer sick days, too.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#42

Post by Xcelerate »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #15

The article quotes a doctor speaking about nursing care. This is as accurate as asking an automotive engineer about automobile repair. Same field, different skill sets. Nurses are trained to identify trends across many (sometimes too many) patients. Sure its inconvenient if a nurse monitors your blood pressure or oxygen levels every 2 hours after surgery, especially when you are sleeping, and especially if you recove…

Seems like it’s backward to me. The machine should be silent if everything is ok and start beeping if things are going wrong.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#43

Post by abecedarius »

ajmurmann wrote: post #38
amluto wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same with audio on machines, that constant beep is annoying to you, but it means the machines are operating and you are getting your prescribed fluids - silence on a night ward is a sign something is wrong, and quickly precedes an emergency alarm. Sure, if there is one source of beeps, then no beeps would be conspicuous, but when there are many things all beeping, having one of them stop beeping may not be so obvio…

To me the beeping also seemed like a quality backwards solution where much better, seemingly obvious solutions exist. Reality is probably much more complicated though. In a solution like you described and I had in my head we'd need a agreed upon protocol between IV drip and monitoring device. Probably the same standard should be used by other, similar devices. If that doesn't happen we get vendor lock in. In addition…

I’m sure you’re right, but being unable to sleep when you need to heal is bad. "It’s complicated" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#44

Post by wnevets »

Xcelerate wrote: post #42
legostormtroopr wrote: post #15

The article quotes a doctor speaking about nursing care. This is as accurate as asking an automotive engineer about automobile repair. Same field, different skill sets. Nurses are trained to identify trends across many (sometimes too many) patients. Sure its inconvenient if a nurse monitors your blood pressure or oxygen levels every 2 hours after surgery, especially when you are sleeping, and especially if you recove…

Seems like it’s backward to me. The machine should be silent if everything is ok and start beeping if things are going wrong.

but what if the alarm isn't working when something is wrong?

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#45

Post by MattLaroche »

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #30

For both of our children, the hospital caused us more stress and discomfort than anything else. Newborn baby's finally asleep, wife is comfortable re pain, finally start to get some sleep. Then the nurse comes in at 2 am, writes her name on the board, asks us questions that they should have the answer to, then leaves. Nurse change 3x a day, baby doctor checking in to ask if were ok, mom doctor doing the same, house k…

I hear it.

For our first child, for the first 24 hours or so postpartum, my wife and child both needed something checked every couple hours.

Our overnight nurse said something like "I'll be doing your wife's checks at midnight and 2am, and your baby's at 1am and 3am". When I asked if my wife and child could be checked in the same entries, it turned out they could. I was surprised the hospital didn't do it by default that way for less time sensitive checks.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#46

Post by onion2k »

Xcelerate wrote: post #42
legostormtroopr wrote: post #15

The article quotes a doctor speaking about nursing care. This is as accurate as asking an automotive engineer about automobile repair. Same field, different skill sets. Nurses are trained to identify trends across many (sometimes too many) patients. Sure its inconvenient if a nurse monitors your blood pressure or oxygen levels every 2 hours after surgery, especially when you are sleeping, and especially if you recove…

Seems like it’s backward to me. The machine should be silent if everything is ok and start beeping if things are going wrong.

How would you tell the difference between a machine that's working and a machine that's been switched off?

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#47

Post by cknoxrun »

Xcelerate wrote: post #42
legostormtroopr wrote: post #15

The article quotes a doctor speaking about nursing care. This is as accurate as asking an automotive engineer about automobile repair. Same field, different skill sets. Nurses are trained to identify trends across many (sometimes too many) patients. Sure its inconvenient if a nurse monitors your blood pressure or oxygen levels every 2 hours after surgery, especially when you are sleeping, and especially if you recove…

Seems like it’s backward to me. The machine should be silent if everything is ok and start beeping if things are going wrong.

This makes me think about data backups. It might make sense to only get a notification if a backup failed, but then how do you know the backup system is actually functioning at all?

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#48

Post by cperciva »

ttemp_throwaw wrote: post #34
quwert95 wrote: post #9

I felt the question and answer to be a little flippant, which is fine, but hear this: Sometimes there are reasons, very genuine reasons. I've been recovering from a recent stay. I, too, was interrupted frequently - every 45 minutes in fact. After a few nods off and being woken up by a knock at the door repeatedly I asked 'why' and the staff gently explained that me sleeping for too long would be a bad idea for a few…

Tangentional, but why recent head trauma shouldn't be allowed to sleep? I had a very severe head impact couple of years back, and while I was fuzzy at the time of impact, few hours before I go to bed, it was not until the day after when, my internal functions went half way south. I am not certain if the weakening of some of my external senses immediately happened or not.

Tangentional, but why recent head trauma shouldn't be allowed to sleep?

This was dead, but it seems like a sensible question so I vouched for the comment to resurrect it.

My understanding is that with any head trauma doctors are concerned about the possibility of bleeding into the brain, and it's much easier to detect the neurological symptoms of this in a patient who is awake. But I'm not a medical doctor; someone else here may be able to provide a more in depth answer.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#49

Post by rifung »

Xcelerate wrote: post #42
legostormtroopr wrote: post #15

The article quotes a doctor speaking about nursing care. This is as accurate as asking an automotive engineer about automobile repair. Same field, different skill sets. Nurses are trained to identify trends across many (sometimes too many) patients. Sure its inconvenient if a nurse monitors your blood pressure or oxygen levels every 2 hours after surgery, especially when you are sleeping, and especially if you recove…

Seems like it’s backward to me. The machine should be silent if everything is ok and start beeping if things are going wrong.

That was my first thought too.

However, the downside of that solution is that the failure signal relies on correctness of the machine. In the current system, the failure signal is guaranteed to occur during failure with a zero false negative rate.

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