Why Hospitals Should Let You Sleep

[Ohiogal]

If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest?

There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep. And nurses and others visit frequently to give medications, take vitals, draw blood or perform tests and checkups — in many cases waking patients to do so.

Some monitoring is necessary, of course. Medication must be given; some vital signs do need to be checked. And frequent monitoring is warranted for some patients — such as those in intensive care units. But others are best left mostly alone. Yet many hospitals don’t distinguish between the two, disrupting everyone on a predefined schedule.

Peter Ubel understands the problem as both a physician and patient. When he spent a night in the hospital recovering from surgery in 2013, he was interrupted multiple times by blood draws, vital sign checks, other lab tests, as well as by the beeping of machines. “Not an hour went by without some kind of disruption,” said Dr. Ubel, a physician with Duke University. “It’s a terrible way to start recovery.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/upshot/why-hospitals-should-let-you-sleep.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20181203&nl=upshot&nl_art=0&nlid=74838209emc%3Dedit_up_20181203&ref=headline&te=1

[pandr32]

1. I can attest to this

Sleep is important, but you won't get much in the hospital. Often the other person in the room has a separate schedule for their medications, etc. and so you get interrupted while they are attended to as well as yourself.
Also, those damn tvs don't come with earphones--at least not in the hospitals I have had the pleasure (ahem) of having to stay in.

[Lisa0825]

2. My mom had "ICU Psychosis."

They said it was from the combination of losing all track of time (no windows), and the constant interruptions of sleep. She had serious hallucinations.

[CTyankee]

6. I had the same thing a few years back. It was a bizarre experience.

Fortunately, the staff knew all about this phenomenon because they had seen it before.

[Jarqui]

3. After my wife endured about 26 hours of labor - after being up all day,

they wouldn't leave her alone - including rummaging around her bedding looking for a pen - stupid, unnecessary stuff. They had to take her BP periodically to make sure there was no internal bleeding, etc I get that. But she could not get an hours contiguous sleep without them doing something.
I granted her wish to get her out of there within 12 hours of delivery so she could get some badly needed sleep. I watched her like a hawk to make sure she was safe (internal bleeding being the biggest concern).

My best friend's sister-in-law just had surgery for ovarian cancer. They removed the tumor, did an appendectomy and a hysterectomy in an afternoon procedure and sent her home that evening. Their reasoning was home sooner was safer because of the the bugs around the hospitals these days .

[Runningdawg]

5. Maybe not you

but there is a good chance a patient poked by a pen in bed will sue. Specifically, sue the nurse who lost it there. Even if the lawsuit is not successful she will more than likely lose her job. I would have helped your wife into a bedside chair so I could have stripped the bed, found the pen and given her fresh linen, which should be done after EVERY delivery anyhow.

[Jarqui]

10. The pen was found on the desk at the nurses station

She already had fresh linen. We never saw a nurse near the bed with a pen.
I think they should have looked a little more thoroughly at the nurses station before disturbing all the recovering mothers

[rsdsharp]

4. I was in the hospital about ten years ago.

They took blood about every two hours. Most techs would come in during the night, and draw it in very low light. iI only took a couple of minutes, and I could go right back to sleep. One asshole came in about 2 AM and snapped on the overhead lights. They were so bright my eyes were watering. When I complained he tartly informed me not to expect to be able to sleep in the hospital.

When I told him he needed to take the blood from my hand (all the other techs had -- I have veins that roll terribly and don't like to be stuck multiple times) he told me it violated protocol and stomped out of the room. Twenty minutes later another tech came in and drew the blood. When I mentioned that I guessed I'd managed to piss the other guy off, she said he's been called away to another patient. I asked if he could draw blood there since he'd left his kit in my room. Never saw him again.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. They are hastening the death of many seniors.

I saw it with my mom. Outside of the fact that the doctor ruptured the vein when he tried to unblock a stent, I got to see her go into a goofy stage before she died, babbling nonsense because of the lack of sleep.

It's not a surprise that these doctors get away with these things. Many families prefer not to prolong the trauma of losing a parent because they don't believe they have fair chances in court.

[Ohiogal]

8. I have two personal anecdotes to add.

When I had my first son, I was in labor for an excruciating 36 hours. I was beyond exhausted. I think I fell asleep right after they put him in his incubator (or passed out, I'm not sure). Several hours later, I'm in my hospital room, and two staffers come in, this is around 3 am, they flip on all the overhead lights, and proceed to have a party in there, jangling cleaning buckets around, talking in very loud voices, laughing, etc. They were getting the bed on the other side ready for someone else. I was so startled and rattled and it is a feeling I'll never forget. I must have dropped off again, because the next thing I remembered was hearing two nurses yakking loudly outside my door. Evidently they had tried to bring my son into my room twice over the night time and they couldn't even wake me up. Evidently they found that funny and were laughing about it.

The other time was about ten years ago when I had my cancer surgery. I had been through a 6 hour operation and woke up in recovery extremely ill and sore. Tried to sleep away the rotten feeling in my room, but my roommate had her extended family all there around dinner time, and I mean aunts, uncles, small children, siblings, etc. and they had the TV blaring and were yakking loudly and feasting on bags of fast food that someone had brought up, (the smell of which was incredibly nauseating to me). They were still there after 11 pm, and I was beside myself needing to sleep. I rung for the nurse and asked her wasn't it time for them to leave? and the answer was, they are her family and we aren't allowed to make them leave. I asked for another room but was told the people who did the patient moving were off for the night.

And those awful loud pagers in each room that blare an announcement every 5 minutes! And the food carts they wheel down the hallways that sound like a 747 flying overhead. Hospitals are just absurd places. I try my best to stay out of them!

[BigmanPigman]

9. When I was in the hospital for three days

I didn't get ANY sleep. They were constantly waking me up and wouldn't give me anything to sleep, like Xanax. I had 30 pounds of IV fluid pumped into my body in 24 hours and from my toes to my head I was super bloated and my skin was sore from it. I felt like a sausage in casing. I needed a rest AFTER my exhausting hospital trip.

[LakeArenal]

11. I had ten days in a nursing home 3 years ago,

My biorhythms were so screwed up I haven’t had a good nights sleep since. That’s not hyperbole.

[dalton99a]

12. NYT, 1964: Wake‐up War Between Patient and Nurse; Why must people in hospitals be awakened so early?

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/10/archives/wakeup-war-between-patient-and-nurse-why-must-people-in-hospitals.html
Wake‐up War Between Patient and Nurse; Why must people in hospitals be awakened so early? Even doctors are asking. In the meantime, there is evidence that the battle may be swinging the patients' way.
MAY 10, 1964

“THE very first requirement in a hospital,” wrote Florence Nightingale more than 100 years ago, “is that it should do the sick no harm.”

Her point of view, as straightforward as a tongue depressor and as sensible as a pair of medium‐heeled white shoes, is still widely held. There is hardly a nurse, doctor or hospital administrator who would not subscribe to it. Yet those in their care — the patients — continue to emerge by the thousands from hospitals, cured but complaining. The complaints are loud, and have to do, for the most part, not with demonstrable harm suffered, but with psychological distress — an anguish that is often harmful and even in its mildest forms certainly never did anyone any good.

High on the list of patients' complaints is that they're awakened so early every morning, for no good reason that they can see. Recently, patients with that complaint found a sympathetic spokesman in — of all places — the medical profession.

Dr. Amos R. Koontz of Baltimore declared in Current Medical Digest that “almost everyone who has ever been a patient in a hospital has been annoyed at having a nurse wake him early in the morning — often before daylight — to take his temperature, wash his face, give him a cathartic or do some other silly thing that could be done later.” His diagnosis of the reason these things happen: “So the nurses can get on with their work, of course!”

Dr. Koontz is opposed to patients' having their rest disturbed “when they are having their second sleep (and often their best) for something that can be done later just as well,” and he advises doctors to “be careful in leaving orders” overnight and thereby “reduce some of the abuses of the nursing service.”

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