Hospitals are not a great place to get some rest
But a new program is trying to change that—for the better:
…[I]n a new study, a Chicago hospital adopted sleep-friendly measures for patients that led to fewer nighttime awakenings without compromising care. Nighttime room entries dropped by 44 percent after researchers educated doctors and nurses on the health consequences of in-hospital sleep deprivation. The researchers also tweaked the hospital’s electronic health records system to avoid unnecessary overnight disruptions.
Over a year, patients in the so-called SIESTA unit also experienced an average of four times fewer disruptions for medication dosing and three times fewer for routine vital signs.
“We’ve known [inpatient sleep deprivation] is a problem since Florence Nightingale in the 1800s, so why hasn’t it been fixed? It’s a very patient-centered problem that also has health implications,” said study author Dr. Vineet Arora. She’s a professor of medicine at University of Chicago.
This would be wonderful, if it actually helps the situation that seems to prevail now, which is that you have to recover from the stresses of the hospital stay itself. I’m sure some of the awakenings are necessary, although disruptive, but apparently there are things they could do to make that aspect of thing less frequent, disorienting, and counterproductive to full healing.
Wake up! It’s time for your sleeping pill!
Yep this is a problem. My only hospital stay in my life was about ten years ago when I had to have my gall bladder removed and I spent two nights of annoyance in the hospital. Some bizarre policy said I had to be weighed each shift so that meant being woke up at 4 in the morning and get out of bed to get on the scale. And the door had to be open to hear the staff talk loudly about everything under the sun. I realize for them it’s the middle of the work day but jeez it’s the middle of the night for your customers.
Yes yes yes! Doesn’t everybody in the world know that sleep is of the essence when you’re sick or hurt? Not in the oh-so-hot hospital at which I was a guest a few years ago.
They woke me up at least every hour for one reason or another.
Same thing at a nursing home where I had to stay for awhile.
When I was a girl (in the fifties — and by the way I’m still a girl!), the Sue Barton books were in high favor. We met Sue when she was just entering nursing school, and followed her career right through and past motherhood.
Her first year in nursing school, she was taught never ever to bump, let alone sit on a patient’s bed (they hadn’t got the memo at the nursing home), and above all not to waken a patient unnecessarily. Nighttime was to be as quiet as possible.
Go Helen Dore Boylston! (Authoress of the Sue Barton series, and by the way a friend and betimes housemate of Rose Wilder Lane, libertarian journalist and daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder).
I see she trained at Mass. General. Very interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Dore_Boylston
PS. I still re-read the series once in awhile. In fact, this might be a good time….
When I spent two days in the hospital with my wife, I always got a kick out of nurses trying to enforce Do Not Disturb rules when they, the nurses and staff, are the cause of most disturbances.
But HEAVEN FORBID the little old lady in the bed on the other side of the curtain wants to turn the volume up so she can hear Wheel of Fortune. Then its “SSHHHHHHHH!”
Nurses annoy the crap out of me. And I am married to one so I know whereof I speak.
Never could see the sense in waking patient up in the middle of the night to give them medications.
I assume that the idea was to make sure that these medications were given in a way that assured an even level of the drug in the patient’s bloodstream throughout every 24 hr period.
However, interrupting a patient’s sleep to give them their medication just seems counterproductive.
I guess it all depends on which of these two factors you believe is more important to a patient’s overall health and recovery–uninterrupted sleep, or level medication levels in a patient’s blood.
Are doctors and nurses that clueless and incompetent? Or is it some kind of passive-aggressive sadism? I vote for the latter.
Doesn’t this come under Med 101, the “first, do no harm” meme?
Snow on Pine,
Back in the early 80s I had a friend who had severe diabetic issues, she was on an advanced treatment program and wore a small gadget that auto regulated her insulin levels. If a hospital patient needs an even level of medications, hooking them up to such a device, at least at night… seems like a no brainer.
When it comes to patient treatment, a personal incident demonstrated to me that many doctors have a form of tunnel vision.
@ Geoff: I don’t know about American doctors, but nurses trained in the Philippines are in a class by themselves (then again the profession is taken quite seriously there).
Yes, something happened to me back in the eighties when the Navy hospitalized me. But I have no idea what and neither do they. We both agree that when I was brought quivering into the emergency ward and the Navy doc was like, “Steve, we are going to find out if you’ve bee doing drugs. If you don’t tell us it’s going to go worse for you.”
I squeezed his hand, Oh, God, did I squeeze his hand. I squeezed his hand until I heard the rivets pop. Back then I was playing rugby and I was pretty fit. And if this guy wanted to pass me off as some spiritual lightweight, fine. But the last thing he could afford was a “Squeeze my hand” moment.
I chuckled at his pain as I slipped from consciousness.
He got me back, though. I spent a week in the hospital for a misdiagnosis. And every day hurt. A lot.
I actually meant this for a different comment thread. Doctors, don’t laugh at your patients. At least while the are conscious. And don’t wake them up to rub it in. Whatever it is. And you never really know.
Worked on a military ward, and I quite vividly remember the nurse and her little rolling cart, with meds in little paper cups–each with a very neat name tag in a metal holder above each little cup, that she rolled around in the middle of the night– from room to room–waking patients up with a flashlight so they could take their medicine as per doctors orders.
“We’ve known [inpatient sleep deprivation] is a problem since Florence Nightingale in the 1800s, so why hasn’t it been fixed?”
So much this.
Julie near Chicago on February 1, 2019 at 4:33 pm at 4:33 pm said:
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I have gotten so tired of the mega-volume-million-page-R-rated novels that fill today’s fiction shelves, that I am rereading my own copies of Sue Barton, Cherry Ames, Rick Brant, etc.
AND I’ve recently read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books straight through.
I didn’t know about that connection!
I have heard about their book, but didn’t know Boylston wrote the Sue Barton books. Seems like she knew what she was talking about.
Neo,
With apologies to the readers of this thread, this is OT (off topic)…
I know that you are keen on leftist-to-conservative conversion stories, considering your own intellectual journey. The following article by Clifton Ross, a previous cheerleader for the left in general and for the “Bolivarian Revolution” in Venezuela in particular, is a good example. Cheers.
The Bolivarian God That Failed – Quillette
https://quillette.com/2019/02/01/the-bolivarian-god-that-failed/#menuopen
Roy Nathanson, I have read Clifton Ross’s book and also his articles at Caracas Chronicles. His article at Quillette was well-written. Unfortunately,Commies hijacked the comment thread at Quillette- not that there wasn’t a lot of pushback against them.
Working around nurses is a great way to diminish your opinion of nurses. I very seldom had disagreeable exchanges with physicians or surgeons (most of whom had good reason to be pissed when they were dumping on me). Nurses are another matter.
Edwin Faust had an article in The Latin Mass some years about the decline in decorum in medical settings in which nurses are deeply implicated. Animated social conversations while patients were trying to sleep figured in it a great deal.
“We’ve known [inpatient sleep deprivation] is a problem since Florence Nightingale in the 1800s, so why hasn’t it been fixed?”
The patients think the system is run for the convenience of doctors. The doctors think the system is run for the convenience of administrators. The administrators think the system is run for the convenience of the system.
+Western and Eastern medicine are quite primitive, with too many alchemical mistakes and toxicities.
The true medical knowledge is only known in some niche and hidden lineages.
All the world is a stage and everything is known? Then why does Snowden live in Russia because he is afraid of the American CIA goons of the Deep State and why does Trum not realize he was being spied on by America.
A lot more things are hidden than apparent, something Americans weren’t indoctrinated with thinking about in school. The masters of the livestock peons don’t really want you to wake up, get woke, take the red pill, or do anything else that smacks of Awakening to who the Judas goats are.
The DS is quite content watching Americans bash each other in this Red vs Blue fight for their entertainment. If Demoncrats win? Great, they get more pedo sex traffickers in. If Republicans win? Great, they get more pedo sex traffickers in….
What difference are you Americans making. What difference does it make.
So much this.
DS: Livestock needs better accomodations? Lol, pull the other one.
“Do no harm”
So if I take this alchemical Western pill, it won’t have negative effects?
“Lol, if you take this pill, you might have hundred negative effects, including bleeding from all 7 orifices, and even death. Now pay up what you are owed, I need a new Porsche and gold watch.”
That’s your “doctors” boys and girls in the West. The Authorities of “Do no Harm”.
My clients sometimes call what I do doctoring or medicine. I make sure to correct them swiftly. Healing is not medicine, not as you mortals understand it.
“…. not as you mortals understand it.”???
Arrogant and presumptious much?
Roy Nathanson:
It’s a feature, not a bug, to be both. That’s our Y.
When I was in a VA hospital a couple of years ago, they decided to irrigate some poor bastard’s bladder to flush out kidney stones (I heard the doctor tell him the floor of his bladder looked like a gravel pit). They flushed it, by running some kind of fluid the wrong way, about 18 times, and I stopped counting. They did this starting at 3 a.m.
VA rooms are 4 patients per. So there’s lots of sleep interruptions. But what bugged me most was a door in the nurses’ station area. When that door closed, as it did many times at night, the thump echoed through the floor throughout the ward. If you were in bed, the bed frame conducted the thump up to your pillow and into your ear.
Finally I asked to talk to the head nurse for the ward. She came to see me, and I explained the thump and the source. Then I told her that somewhere in the hospital’s maintenance staff was a door closer genius. Find that guy, and have him adjust the door closer. I promised her that this guy existed, she just needed to call around until she located him. She did, that day. He came and adjusted the door closer. No more thump.
I still don’t know why they had to do the guy’s bladder at 3 a.m., though.
It is amusing to read this thread while sitting in my hospital bed waiting to be discharged. I had a small stroke yesterday. Awakened every two hours all night.
Mike K:
Be well and heal quickly!!
Home now. Troubles typing with left hand. That’s all.
Roy,
Thanks for the link to the Ross article. Interesting to read one by someone who came into the light via a Latin-American rather than a European/Eurasian/American route.
I haven’t yet read the article nor seen the video to which Mr. Ross links, but they both look interesting.
AesopFan,
Perchance have you ever read the “Jennifer” books by Eunice Young Smith? I grew up on those, loved them, still love them. Jennifer grows up on a “farm” (not much of a one, I must say, given that it was something like seven acres, IIRC, in the midst of Illinois farm country around either LaSalle or Ottawa, Illinois, only a little south of Aurora) probably around 1910.
Miss Smith presented the more interesting and good-natured aspects of rural life, including in her portrait the friendship between Jennifer and her bedridden, crippled friend, whom among other things she teaches to read.
Eventually Jennifer’s horizons grow broader, as her much-loved Aunt Lobelia comes out from Chicago to stay for a while with the Hill family. Later, Jennifer stays for a while with her aunt in Chicago.
These books are not like the Little House books in presenting the real rigors of farm life (in any era). But they’re charming, and to me very interesting and lively. Of course, I’m a farm girl from only about 50 miles NW of Jennifer, so I can relate.
Recommended. –And, Aesop, if you have read them, I’d love to know your opinion. :>)