Shirey, M. (2011).  Strategic leadership for organizational change. JONA. 41 (1). Retrieved November 13, 2017, from 

 

Thanks for sharing this video. It’s an all too common theme—patients go to the hospital, get admitted, and need to get rest but end up feeling more frustrated because of lack of sleep. Patients need to sleep for emotional health, wound healing, and to maintain a strong immune system (Brown, 2011). I think it’s the combination of minor noises (rolling the vitals machine down the hallway, closing a patient’s door across the hall, another coworker laughing at a joke from a patient that just got admitted, etc.) that adds up to be a major distraction in peace and quiet for patients. Progress has certainly been made in the last four years, and hospitals will continue to make progress in this area as noise reduction will always be a priority.  We now have scanners and phones that be put on vibrate or silent, carts have been replaced that had squeaky wheels, and earplugs are now offered on most units.  Unfortunately, in the medical/surgical units, noise will always be inevitable but we can do our best to all work in an acceptable noise range, hence the traffic light detection system is great for monitoring this. Because there will always be noise on the units, the need for project sustainability will always be there too.  I do feel we can go further with this.  It would take time and a lot of money but we could use a lighting system or text page to communicate.  For example, instead of calling the doctor at the VA, veterans use Myhealth-E Vet, a program that allows veterans to write secure messages to their health care provider.  Usually the responses are immediate.  What if patients could do this from their own room. For example, patient writes a message c/o pain, and fills out a short survey, answering the PQRST’s of Pain and the nurse receives the text and administers the pain medication without ever having to talk over a loudspeaker waking his roommate up. I might be on to something here….

 

Liam

 

Reference:

 

Brown, T. (2011). Need sleep? Stay out of the hospital. Retrieved November 18, 2017, from https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/need-sleep-stay-out-of-the-hospital/