When my wife gave birth to our daughter we had a room to stay in. Every 1.5-2 hours the nurses came in to ask questions and run tests. It was maddening. My wife had to finally cry and beg them to stop. Afterward, we managed about a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#72Is there a website or service that scores hospitals? Customer service, outcomes, incidents, and whatever other relevant data
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you had a conversation to address concerns about your spouse’s care? There is always some flexibility around the care that she’d be receiving, and one core component to that is your rational/measured input, either in person or by phone. Framing your concern as rational helps immensely in establishing a dialogue with care staff. It sounds like your core problem is that you want to be bothered less. Nurses are not…
We ran into this with my daughter who needed multiple surgeries. Two different experiences in two different hospitals. First hospital was world renowned, ranked #1 in the world for the category of care she needed. This hospital seemed to spend all their money on what I would call “celebrity surgeons”. World renowned, only the best. I suspect the side effect is that they spent much less money on nursing care. There wa…
Our daughter was in for surgery at a world renowned hospital #1 for what she needed ... and our experience was like your second example. After she moved to the step-down unit from the ICU, she had the same day nurse for the next three days and the same night nurse for four, as well as a consistent overnight NP throughout. We had a private room with a separate vestibule containing a washing station & laundry bin for scrubs/aprons. Also in the room was a whiteboard where the current nurse always wrote the intended schedule and reviewed it with us at the start of their shift. Our room had a single-bed sized sofa and a fold-out chair. It was quiet, and except when we had to wake our daughter for overnight oral meds, the nurses let her sleep. To be honest, while it was a hugely stressful situation, I'm convinced the hospital recovery environment and staff played an enormous role in our daughter being able to be discharged only 4 days after open heart surgery.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#74I’m a doctor and I agree lack of sleep is a huge problem for inpatient care. I (and most of my colleagues) try to avoid waking patients wherever possible. The main reasons I need to wake patients at night is: a) they are unwell. This is unavoidable b) recanullating for fluids/medication that need to be administered overnight. c) for new admissions I need to do more routine tasks (ensure regular meds are prescribed in…
I don't know why hospitals don't invest in the very same technology I use every night as a downtown urban area dweller to stay asleep -- a sleep mask, and headphones with a continuous stream of pink noise. I can sleep through pretty much anything in that cocoon, and I'm a fairly light sleeper.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#75I’m a doctor and I agree lack of sleep is a huge problem for inpatient care. I (and most of my colleagues) try to avoid waking patients wherever possible. The main reasons I need to wake patients at night is: a) they are unwell. This is unavoidable b) recanullating for fluids/medication that need to be administered overnight. c) for new admissions I need to do more routine tasks (ensure regular meds are prescribed in…
During our recent stay, while the monitors did indeed beep, it was possible to put them on silent mode, which the nursing staff was happy to do because the rooms all had nice big LED screens outside the door with vitals alerts and the nursing station had a much larger multi-monitor display showing each patient's status. It turned our problem into their problem, but we never had an issue with noise. A large part of this is also because we had a private room, and the rooms all had vestibules for further sound isolution (and containing the scrub-in sink & laundry bin).
That said, besides the specific reason our daughter was in-patient to address, she was otherwise vigorous and healthy, and that absolutely was not the case for the majority of the other kids no the ward, most of whom had congenital heart defects and other developmental conditions, and I can completely understand why it becomes more important to interrupt less stable patients.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sometimes in sick patients, checking vitals is required (to make sure you aren’t dying). Could this be accomplished by using devices that monitor patients vital signs and report the data back to the nurses station? Then spot checks would not really be needed. > Additionally, there is evidence that hourly rounding prevents some bad outcomes like patient falls. Could you list some of the studies you're referencing?
I'm really excited about [0], but as far as I know there is no way to take blood pressure without touching the patient. If someone here could invent it, I could probably provide a test environment for large scale investigations. Re: studies. I can't say I know the evidence that well, so I wouldn't want to mislead, this isn't my area. A google search for Hourly Rounding reveals lots of articles, but I haven't poked in…
For blood pressure, our experience was that the staff were perfectly happy to leave a cuff on our daughter's leg, which automatically took a reading every hour (or on demand).
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#77Man is this so true. Years ago I had a daughter spend some time in a hospital and they wanted to change her diaper every 2 hours...during...the...night! Sure the child who is recovering from brain surgery should have their sleep interrupted 5 times to change a diaper. I am fairly certain no sane parent wakes up a perfectly sleeping baby to change a diaper. My wife kindly told them we didn't need that and they obliged…
Our diapered daughter was recently in the hospital and the only thing they asked us was to weigh a dry diaper as a reference, and then place any soiled diapers on a scale in the room so they could be weighed at the nurse's convenience so they could track I/O, which is otherwise challenging for babies/toddlers.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW my experience was totally different less than 9 months ago when I visited the hospital with my youngest and had to stay a few days for what ended up as a minor surgery (but still with anesthesia): I woke up once in the night and saw a shadow with a tiny led light, carefully taking a look at the sleeping child before disappearing just as quitely. (FWIW the nurse was there every night, but this was the only time I…
I couldn't make sense of what you wrote until the last line. From personal experience, and reading several of the accounts here, I believe that hospitals in the US do not respect sleep, almost willfully so.
This isn't universally true. I'm happy to report that the Cardiac Surgery step-down unit at Boston Children's does a fantastic job working with families to determine the least intrusive modes of nursing care based on their needs & condition.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#79I wondered this a lot before. I'm lucky enough that I haven't spent much time in a hospital in my life, but visiting people there I often heard how hard it was to sleep for them due to constant interruption, noise from neighboring beds or indensive care units where it's constantly busy.
Yet on the other hand it's so often emphasized how important good sleep is for health. It seems such a nobrainer to do everything possible to make sure people can sleep well in a hospital.
Re: Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors
#80I’m a doctor and I agree lack of sleep is a huge problem for inpatient care. I (and most of my colleagues) try to avoid waking patients wherever possible. The main reasons I need to wake patients at night is: a) they are unwell. This is unavoidable b) recanullating for fluids/medication that need to be administered overnight. c) for new admissions I need to do more routine tasks (ensure regular meds are prescribed in…
> often shout at dead patients so they can hear me
Do they usually respond? Have you ever had a reply "from beyond"?