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

511–520 of 528 posts

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#511

Post by xtrimsky1234 »

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"

That's the only reason I don't put my daughter on the school bus. I can save her an extra 30 minutes of sleep by driving her to the school myself.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#512

Post by ineedasername »

uxp100 wrote: post #460
ineedasername wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was being tricky here but I mean the AMA. It controls a great deal about doctor's education and working conditions. It does not collectively bargain, so it's not strictly a union. But it's more powerful than most unions at this point. So a glib, "maybe doctors should get a union to represent them" answer to poor working conditions for residents doesn't really make sense. They already have a powerful organization th…

That is very true, the AMA is not formally a union, but it does exert a significant level of control and influence in standardizing the practices of doctors.

As for patient outcomes, I'd love to see a study of them for the roughly 15% of residents that have a union and very modest work place improvements, compared to outcomes for the rest of residents. You're right, many doctors do seem to "feel" the traditional method is superior, but I'd like to see hard data.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#513

Post by rootusrootus »

shados wrote: post #496
rootusrootus wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except your examples (several of them, at least) are essentially unsolvable. We can't find a time that everyone will agree on, so we collectively chose an arbitrary time that most people seem to deal with okay, and ran with it.

The hospital staff absolutely knows that sleep is important, but they have competing goals that are deemed important enough to interrupt sleep for. That seems very much different from societal-level / cultural priorities.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#514

Post by LargeWu »

hacym wrote: post #311
LargeWu wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our school district has a before school program starting as early as 7:00 so kids that need to be can be dropped off early, but most kids arrive much later. Classes don't start until 9:00 at our school.

Isn't that the same thing though? It's a very common problem without an easy solution.

Kind of the same, but at least it gives parents options. Most kids arrive just before classes start, instead of forcing everybody to get there really early.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#515

Post by uxp100 »

ineedasername wrote: post #512
uxp100 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being tricky here but I mean the AMA. It controls a great deal about doctor's education and working conditions. It does not collectively bargain, so it's not strictly a union. But it's more powerful than most unions at this point. So a glib, "maybe doctors should get a union to represent them" answer to poor working conditions for residents doesn't really make sense. They already have a powerful organization th…

That is very true, the AMA is not formally a union, but it does exert a significant level of control and influence in standardizing the practices of doctors. As for patient outcomes, I'd love to see a study of them for the roughly 15% of residents that have a union and very modest work place improvements, compared to outcomes for the rest of residents. You're right, many doctors do seem to "feel" the traditional meth…

I know I've seen some before, I think The Atlantic had an article about it in the past year.

I found this paper: http://www.acgme.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Position%20Papers/Commit...

It's citations have some hard data. Maybe the most interesting part for me was this:

"There exists instead a widespread belief that physicians can be trained to defy the biology of sleep and that safeguards are in place so that patients and residents are not harmed by work schedules that are unheard of in any other workplace, let alone a hospital. That belief is most evident today in the FIRST and iCOMPARE studies that set out to prove that there is no difference in patient outcomes from residents who work 16 or 30 hour shifts. The principal investigators were so convinced that no harm would come of these experiments that they determined it wasn’t necessary to obtain informed consent from either patients or residents in the hospitals where the studies were conducted. This determination has been widely disputed and is now under investigation by the Office of Human Research Protections."

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#516

Post by vkou »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #478
vkou wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buses are allowed exemptions for pragmatic reasons, not safety reasons. No, buses are safer, period, even without seatbelts. Occupants of bigger vehicles have much better outcomes in auto collisions, and buses are some of the biggest vehicles on the road. Also, most school buses don't do much freeway driving... Not having a seatbelt in 25 mph collision is one thing. Not having a seatbelt in a 70 mph collision is le…

> No, buses are safer, period, even without seatbelts. Occupants of bigger vehicles have much better outcomes in auto collisions, and buses are some of the biggest vehicles on the road. By causing much worse outcomes for occupants of the other vehicle or pedestrians in the same collision. Not really something you want to have around your schools and homes where your kids may be the pedestrians or occupants of the oth…

> By causing much worse outcomes for occupants of the other vehicle or pedestrians in the same collision. Not really something you want to have around your schools and homes where your kids may be the pedestrians or occupants of the other vehicles.

This has nothing to do with whether or not bus riders need to wear seat belts.

> It's also no help for single-vehicle collisions, which are nearly two thirds of auto collisions. 12 ton bus vs. 2000 ton overpass, overpass wins.

> In addition to the unfortunate high center of gravity that increases the probability of rollovers (which are especially likely to cause injury without seatbelts).

You're making buses sound like deathtraps. And yet, per passanger-mile traveled, they, despite lacking seatbelts, are two orders of magnitude safer then personal automobiles. [1] 0.11 deaths/billion miles, versus 7.3 deaths.

Buses, the way we currently use them, are much safer then cars. This isn't even a point of debate.

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transpor...

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#517

Post by astrostl »

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 deadass pre-planned being asleep during my second hour of high school, after recognizing that whatever alertness I summoned in the walk, the bus, and first interactions of the day would dissipate by then. If a study hall was an option, I would take it and sleep at my desk. If it wasn't, I would still sleep at my desk and try to cold-test my way into a D.

Re: Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?

#519

Post by lexicality »

MRD85 wrote: post #518
lexicality wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sex

Do you know what parts of the world is hay used as a slang for sex?

I don't know the reach, but many agricultural activities can be a euphemism if you put a significant pause in front of them. "Where are alice and bob? Oh they're out... (gathering fruit|sowing barley|haymaking|looking for lost sheep|etc)"
Post reply on HN