The upper management staff came unit to unit explaining to us (wispering mind you) of the need to speak quietly and not to raise the voice - EVER.
Some crap about CMS, hospital scores, medicare reimbursment and $$$ - I tuned them all out because in my honest opinion - YOU ARE IN AHOSPITAL, NOT A MONASTERY.
If you want peace and quiet, then go home - I will gladly show you the way out.
Its a new motto - SHHHH (Silence Helps Healing Happen Here).
When will the powers that be realize that I am there to work and keep patients from dying and treat them. I am not there to make them feel like they are at the Ritz-Carlton.
Imagine a code - Wispering the code call, silently doing compressions.
I wish our management would stress noise control. Of course managers come up with silly ideas like acronyms (SHHH), but the message is good. Noise is one of the main complaints I hear from my patients and when you're sick any kind of additional stress is bad. It wouldn't be so bad if it were all job related, but we all get to hear about the various personal problems of the staff etc.
Specializes in Critical Care. CVICU. Adult and Peds PACU..
What about the loud patients? Who literally yell for you when their call light is right next to them. (oh and they just need you to hand them the tissue that's 2 inches away)... Can management inform them of the "new policy"?
During the night I agree that it can get noisy and need to keep it down. During the day though you gotta do what ya gotta do when the phones ring, md rounds, squeaky carts galore.
What would be frustrating would be the approach of management/administration on how to be quiet. (Like kindergarten)
Sounds like from the OP that they talked down to them.
Luckily for me I can't be but so quiet. Even during the night I have pt care to do. Many of my pt's are elderly. Many have hearing aids that they take out at night. Some are just HOH either way. So raising my voice is necessary.
Funny side note: I had 5 pt's one night. All but one HOH. MY non-HOH guy flinched when I spoke. I asked what was wrong and he said I was too loud. I could not help but giggle,apologize and explain to him about my other pt's. He understood
I feel very fortunate that I don't have to deal with the corporate side of healthcare all too often. I believe that the anger comes in when these suits and ties try to enforce unrealistic goals and standards on the working back bone of the hospital, and treat nurses as second class citizens and speak to us with their HR mumbo jumbo.
Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.
If the admin is looking for reduced noise levels they need to lower sound levels through the building in addition to speaking to nurses. So, private rooms with doors that can be closed, reinforced walls, personal intercoms instead of having to yell, phones and alarms turned down with visible cues instead, carts that can be moved about the unit without a clackety-clack-thunk. Oh, and especially, a partitioned room so staff can discuss patient care away from the nurses' desk (where all can hear).
The noise of staff is of minimal impact in my experience. Most try very hard to allow folks to rest.
What really makes things unpleasant are the patients who're moaning, yelling, etc. all the time due to their psychiatric problems, dementia, or downright unpleasantness. I took a patient to the floor recently after an emergency surgery in the middle of the night. The patient in the room next to her was screaming non-stop, regardless of everything that was done to help her.
During the night I agree that it can get noisy and need to keep it down. During the day though you gotta do what ya gotta do when the phones ring, md rounds, squeaky carts galore.
What would be frustrating would be the approach of management/administration on how to be quiet. (Like kindergarten)
"Please use your inside voices everyone. We don't use our outside voices here"
Luckily for me I can't be but so quiet. Even during the night I have pt care to do. Many of my pt's are elderly. Many have hearing aids that they take out at night. Some are just HOH either way. So raising my voice is necessary.
Funny side note: I had 5 pt's one night. All but one HOH. MY non-HOH guy flinched when I spoke. I asked what was wrong and he said I was too loud. I could not help but giggle,apologize and explain to him about my other pt's. He understood
LOL
I sometimes cringe at the noise levels of some of the staff I've witnessed when I was doing clinicals. Most of the noise came from when they were cutting up and joking around, not when they were actually working. I can understand the whole being quiet thing so the patients can heal but like many others have said, delivery of such a message, pt's families, noisy equipment, etc...all play into that. Hospital floors will never sound like the inside of libraries...heck, even some of them are really noisy too!
At the same time our hospital came out with the stoplights, because the staff was so loud, they refused to spend money on fixing the ridiculously loud carts, the doors that bang, etc. Don't tell me you care about noise, but only care enough to fuss at staff rather than fix the problems that are even louder.
And if you want patients to sleep, how about not requiring lab draws be done in the middle of the night?
Finally, don't be surprised when you remodel and make the nurse stations more "open and inviting" that now you can hear everything going on inside it. If you REALLY want to cut down on noise, use sound dampening ceiling tiles, etc.
But hey, treating adults like kindergarteners and giving them stop lights is a way better idea...
I agree to an extent about the noise issue... and my manager is also a tool who constantly covers pt satisfaction surveys and GALLOP employee surveys
But I think it depends on the kind of noise...
fir instance I work night shift... and at LEAST 50% of the noise that happens from the unit is gossip, and joking, and small talk from every secretary aide and nurse working. With everybody talking over each other. This could be minimized... I mean its not a MONASTERY but its not happy hour either..
Maybe just maybe... If this worked, and just once I didnt have to give EVERYBODY ON THE FLOOR ativan to go to sleep.. then it would all be worth it...
Lets keep the small @ home and nobody will be hushing you in an emergency, Ladies....... and gentlemen.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
wow, i am surprised by all the snarky comments. of course they do not expect you to whisper in a code, that is just being ridiculous. i know there is a lot to put up with from management, but that is in any setting, in any business. have you been a patient on a floor? i have, and the many times i sat by my father's side before he passed away, i was appalled by the noise level. every time i was just drifting off, someone would be talking to someone else down the hall (late at night), open a door, then it would be time for vital signs, then it was phones ringing. i was exhausted, not feeling great, but unable to sleep because of the noise. i agree with the above poster, quality rest helps patients heal. if you weren't so defensive, and didn't jump off that cliff taking their instructions to extremes, you might see they have a point. if you hate your job, then go to something else. geeez... we are there for the patients, the patients are not there for us. they pay our salary, and the bottom line is the bottom line. it is like service anywhere else, they can choose which doctors to go to, and they have choices as to what hospital they can go to. hospitals are competing with one another, and like it or not, we are in a service industry. so, like it or not, "customer service" scores are here to stay. why is it so very irritating to be asked to be respectful of their needs for reduced noise, anyway?
as far as snarky goes, this post had it in spades!
if the noise level at your father's bedside was keeping you from sleeping, why not just go home to sleep? of course you were exhausted . . . but it's really not about the visitors, is it? the vital signs. lab draws etc. were for your father's benefit, not yours.
danh3190
510 Posts
I wish our management would stress noise control. Of course managers come up with silly ideas like acronyms (SHHH), but the message is good. Noise is one of the main complaints I hear from my patients and when you're sick any kind of additional stress is bad. It wouldn't be so bad if it were all job related, but we all get to hear about the various personal problems of the staff etc.