Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

Post by kerbalspacepro » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #182

mattjaynes wrote: post #137

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…

You were dealing with doctors and nurses, right? One group runs a gauntlet of fire by sleep deprivation during pre-med training: with on-call work hours up to 120 hours a week. And the other group are typically on shift rotas so their sleep patterns are permanently disrupted. I'm going to call it for them being oblivious to the sleep requirements of ordinary human beings, because these professions are self-selecting…

Post by trey-jones » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

Post by kwhitefoot » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

noxToken wrote: post #212

nnq wrote: post #205

Hospitals worldwide should be optimized for increased patient comfort even at the cast of marginally lowering survival (let's say 1%) and increasing cost (again 1%)! Almost all patients would prefer it. But it's hard to convince people that often in life paying slightly more for a statistically slightly worse outcome increases you comfort ~10x and is 1000% worth it! After all, we live to feel good, and living is only…

I don't want to create a false dichotomy, but it looks like you're saying you can have either one of two things: increased comfort with a higher chance of death and cost or a maintain to the low level of comfort with a higher chance of successful recovery. You go on to say: > After all, we live to feel good, and living is only worth it as long as we feel good doing it! I think I get what you're going for, but I'd rat…

Post by babygoat » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

darepublic wrote: post #232

shados wrote: post #228

I'll push this one step further: why is our entire society built around the idea that sleep literally doesn't matter? - Elementary school starting so early all the kids are half asleep in class. - College + Sleep? Not gonna happen. - 24 hour construction in certain part of NYC, check! - Most cities quiet hours are very precisely 8 hours. Hope your days start at 6:30/7:00 and you're falling asleep precisely at 11pm, a…

I guess on paper going without sleep gives you some kind of competitive advantage? A company that believes otherwise could bet on giving their workers more sleep and they should gain an advantage by doing so.

Post by jyounker » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #218

cstross wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were dealing with doctors and nurses, right? One group runs a gauntlet of fire by sleep deprivation during pre-med training: with on-call work hours up to 120 hours a week. And the other group are typically on shift rotas so their sleep patterns are permanently disrupted. I'm going to call it for them being oblivious to the sleep requirements of ordinary human beings, because these professions are self-selecting…

To be clear, you're saying that people whose job is to - quite literally - understand, diagnose, and treat hundreds (thousands?) of medical issues that they personally haven't experienced, don't have the capacity to understand that not everyone is on their same sleep schedule?