151–160 of 528 posts
People die or suffer serious harm in hospitals all the time. This often happens during sleep, and in many cases it could have been prevented if the patient had been checked on more frequently. It is much easier to confirm that the patient is ok if they are awake. When the nurse softly asks "do you feel ok?" when drawing blood in the night, it is not just meant as soothing, but just as much to check if further treatme…
They always had strict sleeping schedules for all patients, from 23:00 until 7.30 or 8 everything would be quiet and as little as possible would happen. Besides the pain I always slept like a baby and the hospital encourages that as much as possible.
For the birth of my second child, I learned to manage hospital staff so that they would leave my wife and newborn alone unless there was an emergency. I proactively scheduled scans, vital checks for the next morning so that the patients could rest. The experience was so much better than what my wife and first child had. I do not understand why hospitals cannot do this kind of considerate scheduling by default.
Can you elaborate on how you worked with the hospital staff to make this "considerate scheduling" possible? My initial feeling would be that the staff will do their jobs when it convenient for them to do it, regardless of when you would prefer them to do it. How did you manage to convince them to modify their scheduling?
For the birth of my second child, I learned to manage hospital staff so that they would leave my wife and newborn alone unless there was an emergency. I proactively scheduled scans, vital checks for the next morning so that the patients could rest. The experience was so much better than what my wife and first child had. I do not understand why hospitals cannot do this kind of considerate scheduling by default.
I recently had a family member in the intensive care unit (ICU) for over a month in Austin, Texas. I quickly learned my main contribution would be protecting her sleep when I saw she hadn't slept in days because of the constant interruptions. She went from reasonable and compliant in taking her medication, to extremely irritated and noncompliant with the doctors. Of course I could see this was due to sleep deprivatio…
People die or suffer serious harm in hospitals all the time. This often happens during sleep, and in many cases it could have been prevented if the patient had been checked on more frequently. It is much easier to confirm that the patient is ok if they are awake. When the nurse softly asks "do you feel ok?" when drawing blood in the night, it is not just meant as soothing, but just as much to check if further treatme…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
My mother is a doctor (in a different specialty), and this came up when we watched 10 Things I Hate About You , which repeats the myth. You're correct; as far as the patient is concerned, it's better for them if you let them sleep. But it's easier for everyone else if the patient isn't allowed to sleep, as sleeping and dying look exactly the same.
I do not know how many dead people you've attended to, but the ones that I have seen generally lack pulse or breathing. Both of those vitals are monitored for inpatients. And if one of those goes, the other goes too in short order.
Sleeping patients, on the other hand, usually pulse at least once per second, and breathe every six seconds or so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A key lesson I learned with our first child was "just about everything gets easier once you leave the hospital", so with our second we prioritized GTFOing ASAP. It was a good decision.
Yes. Having a different person coming in every 5 minutes to check something else. Somewhat tempered by having to go back in a week later, so all these things aren't useless. Child birth isn't the risk free thing we like to think it is.
For almost all mammals it is, just not for humans, where gestation and partum are uniquely difficult and dangerous.