Comments on: Hospitals are sonic hellscapes

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 17:07:18 +0000

Seems it’s still legal to get a midwife and give birth at home.

By: Alistair

Alistair — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 11:27:10 +0000

On all 3 occasions my wife has given birth, I’ve noticed just how noisy and stressful the wards are. Daytime noise is constant; nights are a bit quieter, but still broken by constant monitoring, crying infants, and distant slamming doors. Hard, washable floors and surfaces don’t help at all.

On all three occasions my wife’s mental welfare deteriorated sharply after 72 hours of exhausted exposure. This of course, made her a “risk” for even more invasive monitoring and to be kept for additional nights. The self-perpetuating nature of the problem was apparent to everyone but the clinical staff.

After 5 days, I got her to sign herself out against medical advice. 16 hours later after proper sleep at home she was completely recovered. I’ve not respected doctors since.

Maybe they could give patients ear defenders, but I think the staff are so de-sensitised to the environment they don’t realise how much it is ‘effing patients up.

By: Sam J.

Sam J. — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 05:26:38 +0000

I spent some time in the hospital and by the time I got out of there I was utterly exhausted and so angry I couldn’t wait to get away. Waking you up every two hours to stick you for blood, constant bleeping. I suspect people in ICU give up and die to stop the abuse. I’m serious about this. It’s horrible. It’s HAS to completely destroy the immune system to be so angry and stressed.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 21:25:28 +0000

The legal incentives are such that one has little choice but to favor 1,000 false positives over one false negative.

If the pattern holds from all other instances of legal incentives like this, the outcome is in fact killing vastly more people, like 15x or something, than allowing a few false negative would.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 14:19:58 +0000

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had to spend so much time in ICUs, Handle. In my few short visits to hospitals, I’ve found the cacophony extremely stressful — especially when I’ve seen its effect on someone sick, tired, and desperate to get better, but unable to rest.

Come to think of it, they should probably pipe all the audio alerts to a speaker outside the door. It’s not the patient who wants or needs to hear them at full volume.

By: Handle

Handle — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 13:57:30 +0000

I’ve spent months in intensive care units, and yes, the alarms are indeed constant, deafening, annoying, and mostly ignored. While most people would like to fix that, it’s impossible. The legal incentives are such that one has little choice but to favor 1,000 false positives over one false negative. And the kind of positive we’re talking about is quickly fatal, so requires an alarm consonant with the necessary urgency of reaction.