Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

motherjones.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 528 posts

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#491

Post by craftinator »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #437
conanbatt wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

There are plenty of people trying to be doctors, but there aren't enough programs to train them at the moment.

I imagine if med schools made it easier to get through their programs, the end result would be a significant lowering of the average pay for their profession, as more doctor's hit the job market. It sounds like it's in the best monetary interest of doctors to keep their professional supply low, allowing the demand for them to be high.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#492

Post by nuguy »

brokenmachine wrote: post #141
nuguy wrote: post #16

I basically lived in a hospital room for the past week, though I’m not sick. The machine that pumps and monitors your iv fluids constantly emits screaming alarm tones. An alarm can be triggered if you bend your arm the wrong way, obstructing the iv. But most often the alarm is triggered because of air in the line. You can silence the alarm. But if a patient is not accompanied by someone, they will probably have to si…

>It’s very annoying and leaves everyone except the nurses very hagard in the morning. Nurses work hard. Believe me, they are haggard in the morning.

The point is that they go home and get uninterrupted sleep.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#493

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

jmckib wrote: post #425
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While on subject of school buses, my driver would not let me cross the street on the way home, so even though I was the first stop, I’d have to wait until we looped all the way around to the end. My stepdad had to scream down their throats and they finally caved, I came home an hour earlier. Talk about the stupidity of that situation!

Just realized I wrote basically the same comment as you. I wish my stepdad had yelled at them! It didn't even occur to me that I could complain.

Oh it didn’t occur to me right away either. This was in middle school and I was not the smartest cookie, so I must have wasted at least 5 trips before the revelation occurred.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#494

Post by shados »

krrrh wrote: post #371
hedora wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Counterpoint: regulations like these are part of what leads to an affordability crisis. It all adds up.

I don't have anything backing this up, buty personal experience is that NIMBY is partly because of the lack of proper building code. People are TERRIFIED of neighbor noise, most of which could be dealt with with better insulation.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#495

Post by shados »

cortesoft wrote: post #379
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…

> College + Sleep? Not gonna happen. Wait, what? I slept so much in college. Way more than at any other point in my life. You schedule your own classes and aren't actually in class that much, gives you plenty of time to sleep.

My workload in college was insane. For one of my semesters I had zero social life and slept a day out of two, one out of three near the end. It was awful. I didn't have a job and lived with my parents who handled food too. Not many people made it through. Was a shitty community college. I would have had an easier time at MIT, heh.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#496

Post by shados »

rootusrootus wrote: post #383
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…

Having to choose a schedule that irritates the least number of people is somewhat different than hospital staff poking and prodding people every hour or so throughout the night, don't you think?

No. My point is that I'm every bit of society we consider sleep as something you can cut as opposed to something critical. Yes my examples were different, but they have the same root cause: quality of sleep isn't considered a big deal.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#497

Post by shados »

umvi wrote: post #439
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…

> Elementary school starting so early all the kids are half asleep in class Isn't the amount of sleep you get determined by when you go to sleep? So if elementary school kids need more sleep just... put them to bed earlier?

Biological clock aside, the kids might not be able to sleep earlier. Can't go to sleep before 7 if the jack hammers are going on until 7, for example.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#498

Post by shados »

Siecje wrote: post #267
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…

Instead of elementary school did you mean secondary? Here elementary school starts the latest.

Dunno, don't have kids. I just know I see the little kids walking around with their parents whenever I'm unfortunate enough to have to be out that early, and I assume hundreds of 9 years old didn't all have to go to a birthday party at 7 am all at the same time.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#499

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kd0amg wrote: post #447
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 inc…

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. That still doesn't seem all that helpful. If my high school had started at 10 instead of 8, I'd be out of class at 5:30 instead of 3:30, done with fencing practice at 8 instead of 6, etc. I'd finish the night's homework two hours later, and finishing that was already well pa…

The only way you'll be getting more sleep is by doing less non-sleep. You can't add hours to the day. What you can do is to arrange the sleeping hours so that they're the ones that come more naturally to more of the people in that age group.

The total lack of unscheduled time is an independent problem.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#500

Post by bzbarsky »

rconti wrote: post #361
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...

Okay, but you don't have counter-evidence. Yes, kids are different, but YES, we also know that younger children generally desire sleep and wake earlier, and teens desire sleep and wake LATER than adults. Biologically. Why not start from there, and THEN acknowledge that everyone's different, rather than starting from the WORST principles and throw up our hands and say "we can't suit everyone, may as well screw as many…

Where did I suggest starting "from the WORST principles"?

What I would suggest is that there is not a Pareto-optimal solution here short of redesigning how schooling works entirely...

Post reply on HN