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Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

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Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#321

Post by ams6110 »

brightball wrote: post #244
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…

My best semester in college I managed to have a schedule of classes that started at 2pm and finished by 8pm. Pretty sure it's the only time in my life where I've literally slept as much as I wanted...and felt great.

Same. My dorm-mates were confounded that I was getting straight "A" grades and seemingly always sleeping.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#323

Post by usefulcat »

bzbarsky wrote: post #318
bpyne wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife's background is in childhood development. Her job involves keeping up with studies in the field. I remember her talking about this issue. There's evidence that school start times should be flipped for elementary and high school students: elementary going in earlier and high school later. Teenagers need more sleep due to their brains re-wiring, so the reasoning goes. Keep in mind that in our school district, e…

As a counter-anecdote, we have to get our kids up by 7:30 to get them to their elementary school on time, and it's a battle every single morning. Left to their own devices, they would sleep to at least 8:30. Kids are different, and we really don't have very good ways of dealing with that in some ways...

So, maybe they would benefit from an earlier bedtime? Not being snarky, am a parent myself.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#324

Post by claudiulodro »

conanbatt wrote: post #297
ineedasername wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I mean, I get that hospitals are 24-hour operations that need doctors & nurses available at all times. So some people are going to get the crap end of that stick and have to do night shifts. But is it really necessary for them to work 80+ hours while they're at it? It seems like there's enough people trying to be doctors that you could cut that down to a healthier 40 hours+ 15 hours on call if it's really neces…

> It seems like there's enough people trying to be doctors Not in the US. The doctor per pop count is very low. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Physi...

I think the key word in the sentence is trying to be doctors. The doctor per pop count in very low because med schools have super low acceptance rates[1]. That would probably be the best place to implement some sort of reforms if we want more doctors.

[1] https://www.accepted.com/medical/med-selectivity-index

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#325

Post by timerol »

ddingus wrote: post #188
smoll wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if you think in purely capitalistic terms (most but not all Americans) or not (again, most Europeans). I mean one way to think about it is the sidewalk is exploitable by businesses as a potential source of revenue for people who want to ride electric scooters (and other businesses that directly grow the economy) and they can pay lobbyists who drive the engine of American economic growth (lol), whereas you…

Walking on the way to the bank, to get a loan, to start a business qualifies as economic activity. As does going to the store, and a whole bunch of other things. The USA built the Interstate Highway System for exactly the reason of economic growth. The ideas behind it are no different from the ones that justified sidewalks. Should any small town evaluate their sidewalk projects, like we have the Interestate Highway P…

Note that not all roads induce enough development to sustain the relevant maintenance, which leads to a fair amount of municipal funding problems: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/4/5-ways-federal...

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#326

Post by dljsjr »

dahfizz wrote: post #279
ExBritNStuff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Elementary school comment rings so true. We have to get my seven year old up at 6:15 to get to school at 7:30. That's if we take him, if he caught the bus he would have to be AT the stop by 6:15. Every day is a battle against exhaustion. On the days that school is delayed due to weather and he can get up naturally at maybe 7:30, he is so much better. He feels better, his attitude is more positive, and he does so…

Why does the school bus pick him up more than an hour before school starts? That seems ridiculous.

Small town America. The high school I attended in 9th grade was a 30 minute drive away if there was no traffic and first bell was at 7:00 AM. It also served 2-3 small towns in the area. I took the bus before I could drive, and my bus stop was one of the first on the route that had to pick up kids from all over the place because we didn't have a lot of busses. So in order to get me to school on time for 7:00 AM, I got picked up at 5:45 AM.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#327

Post by lovich »

random878 wrote: post #288

As someone on HN who is medical, not tech, this thread is as frustrating to read as it would be for many of you to read doctor's opinions on how best to run a software engineering firm. "I'm not a software engineer, but here's my full breakdown on where you are all going wrong based on using a BBC Micro for a week back in 1993"

I can imagine how that is for the specifics, but what is the response from the medical community on sleep? We know it's damaging to be sleep deprived and that hurts patients and medical staff. We also know that being sleep deprived craters ability to do _any_ job after far less than the 18-24 hour shifts that medical staff are routinely working.

Why is this ok is medicine and not any other type of human endeavor?

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#328

Post by ams6110 »

mannykannot wrote: post #237
arkades wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intensive care unit (ICU) There are only two reasons for someone to be in an ICU: they require a therapy no other floor will administer, or their condition/therapy requires very frequent administration/titration/observation. These two reasons frequently overlap. Sleep isn’t optional in general. It’s optional in the ICU, because the premise is “if you don’t need this level of attention to survive, you absolutely sho…

That is a fair point, but if, as this story implies, by the end of the process sleep deprivation was the main impediment to the patient's recovery, and might have led to additional procedures and the problems they bring, then there would be an issue here. I also wonder if, like 'emergency room', 'ICU' has lost some of its meaning in some places.

Wife recently spent a couple of days in hospital for surgery/recovery. She was in a normal double-occupancy room for recovery (i.e. not ICU), yet was still woken every couple of hours by someone taking vitals, drawing blood, doing respiratory checks, bringing food, etc. And the room was hardly ever really quiet because if someone wasn't there to see her, someone was attending to the person on the other side of the curtain that divided the room. She said she hardly slept.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#329

Post by fatnoah »

lphnull wrote: post #257
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've had some of the best lucid dreams I've ever had while my sleep was disrupted by living in the second story of a building smack dab in the corner of a very busy street corner during broad daylight. I had a night job so my sleep schedule was from 7am to 3pm. All in all I had half a dozen lucid dreams and one mindblowingly extreme out-of-body experience which left me breathless upon waking. I think I even had a nig…

>I've had some of the best lucid dreams I've ever had while my sleep was disrupted by living in the second story of a building smack dab in the corner of a very busy street corner

Though not during the day, I lived in a second floor apartment that overlooked a traffic circle that had an elevated subway stop, was a main route for ambulances going to the hospital a block away, and a crucial interchange for traffic entering/existing that part of the city. I barely slept for the first few days and then got the best sleep of my life. I rarely woke up for anything other than my nightly trip to the restroom.

Fast forward a few years and I now live in the suburbs. I've been woken up several times in the past month by the sounds of a mouse scurrying in the ceiling of an adjacent room.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#330

Post by bzbarsky »

usefulcat wrote: post #323
bzbarsky wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter-anecdote, we have to get our kids up by 7:30 to get them to their elementary school on time, and it's a battle every single morning. Left to their own devices, they would sleep to at least 8:30. Kids are different, and we really don't have very good ways of dealing with that in some ways...

So, maybe they would benefit from an earlier bedtime? Not being snarky, am a parent myself.

It's possible. They are generally in bed by 8:30. We have tried experimenting with pushing it back to 8 and that did not have an obvious effect on their mornings and did make evenings a lot more miserable. Going even earlier than 8 is not really feasible given that dinner generally can't happen until 6pm.

(Our no-longer-elementary-schooler, by the way, never really had this problem. He just seems to sleep a lot less in general.... kids are different.)

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