{"id":18101,"date":"2019-03-12T02:12:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T07:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepapergown.zocdoc.com\/?p=18101"},"modified":"2023-03-03T15:45:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T20:45:22","slug":"how-to-sleep-in-the-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zocdoc.com\/blog\/guides\/how-to-sleep-in-the-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Sleep in the Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sleep is essential when you\u2019re fighting a disease or recovering from illness, surgery or physical trauma. That’s because it plays an important role in immunity, as well as other physiological and mental components of the healing process.\u00a0Shoddy, insufficient sleep leaves you more vulnerable to infection<\/a>, more sensitive to pain<\/a> and generally less able to function\u00a0in a stressful environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The irony is that it’s notoriously hard to sleep in the hospital, the place we go specifically for medical treatment and convalescence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are noises we are not used to hearing \u2014 alarms and beeps from monitors and IVs,\u201d says Barbara Bishop, a nurse practitioner with Virginia Beach Neurology. \u201cLights are always on in the hallway and sometimes in your room, and the healthcare staff is constantly checking your vital signs, doing exams and giving you medications. The beds can also be uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, illness itself, pain, side effects of medication and anxiety can also disrupt sleep. To add insult to injury, you might be paired with a roommate who keeps you awake. But experts and experienced patients alike say there are small things you can do to help yourself (or another patient in your life) get shuteye in the hospital.<\/p>\n

Noisy nurses, sleepless nights<\/h3>\n

A Yale University study of critically ill patients suggested that healthcare workers might be part of the problem \u2014 less-experienced nurses and doctors in particular may deliver nonessential care during the night rather than allow patients uninterrupted slumber. They also might not realize how important sleep is for recovery or have a strong handle on how to promote sleep in the hospital setting. And they can be noisy: <\/span>An Australian study<\/span><\/a> found that disruptive noise on hospital wards mostly came from nursing stations, and that nurses were either unaware of the amount of noise they were making or underestimated how strongly patients responded to <\/span>the volume of their voices. Hospital practices, such as scheduling inpatient imaging studies at night so outpatients can undergo tests during the day, and delaying the transfer of patients from the emergency department to a hospital ward, also <\/span>led to sleep deficits<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can ask the staff to help you sleep better by requesting that they not check vital signs or perform blood draws during sleep hours unless absolutely necessary. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same Australian study reported that patients in the hospital slept 1.8 hours less than they did at home, and that 42 percent reported sleeping poorly or very poorly. Nurses perceived patients to be sleeping better than patients said they were. <\/span>Other research<\/span><\/a> has found that patients in the intensive care unit wake up multiple times each hour (sometimes more than six) and spend most of their time dozing in light stages of sleep, which are less restorative than deep sleep. In turn, these sleep patterns can lead to prolonged illness and longer stays in the ICU. Finally, more than half of total sleep time in the hospital occurs during the day. Forcibly adopting an off-kilter sleep schedule can throw off a<\/span> patient\u2019s circadian rhythms (the body\u2019s internal clock) and lead to sleep disturbances that persist long after someone is discharged from the ICU.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSleep deprivation and fragmentation [interrupted sleep] are associated with defects in immunity, spikes in heart rate and blood pressure, delirium and increased anxiety and depression,\u201d according to Dr. <\/span>Budhiraja Rohit, director of the Sleep Medicine Clinic at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston. Lack of sleep and poor sleep can also raise levels of the \u201cstress hormone\u201d cortisol. <\/span><\/p>\n

What you can do<\/h3>\n

Writer and editor Josie Rubio, a frequent patient at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City over the past year, blogs about her hospital experiences at <\/span>A Pain in the Neck<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Since being diagnosed with Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma in 2013, Rubio, now 41, has accrued more than three months of overnight hospital stays for various procedures, tests and attempts to stabilize her health. In the process, she\u2019s become an expert at getting rest in hospital beds. For one, she notes that <\/span>\u201c<\/span>hospital activity tends to be greatest in the morning, at around 6 or 7 a.m., so I tried to go to sleep on the early side. That way, I could shower and order breakfast by the time the doctors made their rounds at 9 or 10 a.m.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rubio also suggests: <\/span><\/p>\n