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Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

motherjones.com

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Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in your experience is there a problem with hospitals not understanding that patients need proper sleep?

I'm very junior and UK based so I can only speak on my experience... No, there is no lack of understanding about the importance of promoting sleep. To suggest that somehow medical professionals haven't got round to working out that there are benefits to having a good sleep is, to be frank, completely ridiculous and quite insulting. A very specific example would be the importance of sleep in relation to delirium in el…

>Clinical need top trumps comfort.

I think this is where the disconnect is. As a best faith interpretation, I don't believe you made the statement in a condescending manner -- I think it just flowed naturally.

The comment I quoted seems to imply waking a patient is akin to disrupting the comfort of the patient. I read the arguments being made in this thread and in the article as: waking the patient and/or disturbing sleep of a patient causes detrimental effects on the patient's health which lie outside the realm of just comfort.

Multi-patient bays seem to act as an architectural reinforcement that sleep is a comfort.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a mix of protocols, procedures, habits and personal biases, as are most such things in most workplaces. But most of all, I think it is an attention thing. For the staff, a patient being sleep depraved for a couple nights is very low on their list of concerns. They see people die almost every day. For the patient, the emphasis is different, especially for the ones that are there for minor issues. Medically, a few…

Except sleep is important to recovery for colds let alone serious ailments. It isn't like complaining about only bland vegetables and starches. It is like complaining about hospital food being literally only a handful of breadcrumbs a day and lamenting their blood counts are so low, muscle atrophy and they have scurvy. Clearly the whiners should have been exercising more

Hospital food actually is quite unhealthy and not conducive to healing. I’d imagine that the only people who woild dismiss such concerns are the people who put such a system in place where they serve white bread and Jell-O with high fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring to people who are barely breathing. Hospital patients need all the nutrition they can get. Providing the equivalent of a frozen dinner or fast food isn’t very responsible.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#403
post #319
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…

You forgot my favorite. In California (and probably other states), the building codes for apartment sound proofing are much weaker than for condos. If you wanted to sleep, you shouldn’t have chosen to rent. Your landlord couldn’t be expected to pay $1000’s [1] extra to build your apartment, after all. (1) https://www.remodelingexpense.com/costs/cost-soundproof-insu...

I hear this claim thrown around a lot, but I've never seen the legal code pointing to a difference in minimum standards for apartments vs condo. Section 25 (http://mlacoustics.com/projects/multifamily/CA.noise.final.p...) treats them the same.

Do you know where the differing laws are?

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To pick up the other kids on a long route. The obvious problem then being that the routes are too long. You have to wonder if there isn't some kind of carpool incentive the school could give to parents to get rid of 90-100% of buses. How many stay at home parents with 9-passenger vehicles would be willing to make $500/month by filling their minivan with other kids when they deliver their own kid as they were going…

All kinds of liability problems with that. School bus drivers are presumably vetted and trained to deal with not just getting from point A to point B, but dealing with students along the way.

In 9th grade, my bus driver let an obviously angry man onto the bus.

Some kids threw peanuts out the window and into his car. He followed us to the next stop and pounded on the door. She courteously opened the door and in he came, shouting the whole way.

The awkwardness was compounded when I realized I had known this man for 10 years.

I don’t have a very high opinion of bus driver training.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#405
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 theory is that there is an eternal secret war between morning people and evening people and the morning people are winning. Resistance must be done in secret but fight back in every way you can.

And both groups don't even acknowledge the existence of 3rd shift workers. It's not even just businesses being closed or noise. As a night person even going on a walk can get you harassed by the cops or ticketed for being in a park. There's an implicit assumption, one that's been baked into law, that anyone doing things at night is up to no good.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#406
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of it is financially motivated in this way and how much is the inertia of this hazing-style culture. From what you've said, I'm sure hospitals would object to a change out of financial self-interest, but it seems the ingrained culture stops the issue from getting a big push to begin with. I know labor unions (sometimes rightfully) get a bad rap, but it seems this is exactly the type of abuse they we…

But Doctors have a very strong labor union, which tends to advocate FOR this system. Probably even though the AMA represents residents, doctors who have succeeded in the residency system have more sway within it.

I'm in the US. After some searching, I can't find any information about most doctors having unions. I found one that appears to mostly work with California doctors, but that was about it. Either way, I was speaking about residents, who don't have particularly strong or ubiquitous unions. Again, that's in the US. Other countries may vary.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#407
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…

[deleted]

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To pick up the other kids on a long route. The obvious problem then being that the routes are too long. You have to wonder if there isn't some kind of carpool incentive the school could give to parents to get rid of 90-100% of buses. How many stay at home parents with 9-passenger vehicles would be willing to make $500/month by filling their minivan with other kids when they deliver their own kid as they were going…

I actually did the math on this in my district. Based on the cost data they published, it costs (roughly) $1.5-2/ride on our school bus system. Allowing 20 minutes for pick up and drop off, no current ride-sharing system I know about would be cost competitive, but its a relatively close thing. RE carpooling, this probably cost competitive but their are other factors that make this harder than you think. Buses are all…

> Buses are allowed exemptions to booster seat rules, minivans aren't

Buses are allowed exemptions for pragmatic reasons, not safety reasons. Whatever the rule is, it should be the same for both, in which case there is no relative advantage. If you're not willing to allow it for a minivan, why are you willing to allow it for a bus? (This also doesn't apply to high school students who don't need them anyway.)

> How do you get kids to school if the primary driver is sick or has car trouble?

How do you do it when the school bus driver is? You maintain some level of reserve and you send someone else.

> Who is liable for accidents?

The insurance company. The better question is who pays for the insurance, but considering that the school would already be paying for it for a school bus, it still doesn't appear to be any disadvantage for the school either way.

> Do you randomly drug/alcohol test your parents?

They're voluntarily choosing to drive someone else's kids for money. If you want to do that and they don't, they don't get put on the roster and don't get paid. It seems like the only real question is whether (or how often) it's worth the cost given the expected probability of drug abuse in your parent population.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#409
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A school system that puts kids first would start by 9am but how would society cope with that ? Do it like daylight savings time. Have everything start two hours later, all year. The issue for the kids is time related to sunrise, not time related to when the parents go to work.

> The issue for the kids is time related to sunrise, not time related to when the parents go to work. Is that what it is? I thought it was total sleep duration. Do you have a link explaining more?

> I thought it was total sleep duration.

They're related. If you go to sleep at the same time (relative to actual-midnight) and get up an hour before school, you get more sleep when school starts later.

Or else what difference would any of it make? If all you did was start school at 9:30 instead of 7:30 and then kids used that to go to bed two hours later, nothing has changed. But when people go to sleep (and are inclined to wake up) has a lot to do with daylight.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#410
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…

You might have forgotten to mention our society's addiction to caffeine... Am writing this sleep-deprived, on my fourth espresso, check. :-)
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