THE DOCTOR IS IN
OP / ED BY DR. ADIL MANZOOR
Virtually everyone on the planet loves to sleep. Even the ones that claim they don’t fully understand how necessary it is to survival. If you even a full day without sleep, you will start to experience different dangerous side effects. But many people don’t even need to go a full day before they start to experience the side effects of insufficient sleep; just missing a few extra hours will do it.
While most people enjoy sleep because it allows their body to recharge and refresh, not many know that sleep is actually necessary to the healing process. This leads us to today’s topic – sleep in hospitals. If sleep is necessary for healing, then you would expect that hospitals will allow good and sufficient sleep for patients. That only makes sense, right?
Well, many hospitals in the United States either don’t know this, don’t care enough to actually do something, or believe there is nothing they can do. Irrespective of the category the hospital falls into, there is absolutely no justification for poor, insufficient sleep commonly observed in hospitals.
So you can fully understand the gravity of this discourse, let me explain some of the benefits of sleep as it relates to the healing process. For starters, around 90% of growth and healing hormones are released during sleep. And not just any type of sleep now, but deep sleep. I don’t know how familiar you are with the biology of sleep, but there are two phases of sleep – rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. NREM sleep is further subdivided into four stages, known as stages 1 – 4.
Every time you sleep at night, your body alternates between REM and NREM sleep in what is known as the sleep cycle. It lasts around 90 minutes. The last two stages of NREM sleep are known as deep sleep, and you usually get to these stages within one hour of sleep. It is during this deep sleep that the body’s healing processes do their work.
Unfortunately, many people in hospitals don’t get enough of this deep sleep because of frequent interruptions from either doctors or nurses and bad sleeping conditions. This essentially means the healing process for these individuals is not as smooth.
Also, sleep is important in managing inflammation. I have noticed that many tend to refer to inflammation always in a negative sense, which is far from the truth. Inflammation is actually important for the immune system to ward off foreign invaders and infections. The problem is when inflammatory responses occur unnecessarily and become chronic. However, sleep can help manage inflammation, allowing the body to fight infections.
Then, there is the fact that sleep helps refresh the body. This is even more important for patients that usually go through different medical procedures and processes during the day, making them so stressed by the end of the day. Sleep helps calm their body down and ensures they wake up in a great mood, which is also essential for healing.
I could go on, but you get the point. This is why it is totally unacceptable that patients don’t sleep well in hospitals. There are stories of patients that can barely get an hour of sleep before being interrupted by a medical practitioner. There are other cases where the hospital environment is itself unconducive for sleep. This may be because of bad lighting, uncomfortable beds, noise, etc.
Whatever the case may be, it is the responsibility of health workers to ensure patients get enough sleep. This may be by combining all medical processes that have to be done at night so patients can sleep for extended periods. Also, hospitals should consider optimizing their rooms and beds to support good sleep. Some hospitals have even taken the initiative and implemented “sleep rooms.”
Whatever the case may be, for desired health outcomes and positive patient experience, hospitals must ensure they put patients in the best possible condition to sleep well. Of course, I know some patients don’t sleep well for reasons beyond the hospital, but at least the hospital puts them in the best condition to sleep. After which, the reasons for the lack of good sleep can be properly tackled.
This article was written by Dr. Adil Manzoor, DO, a Board-Certified Internist & Board Certified Pediatrician who works as a Hospitalist and Emergency Room Physician. He is also the current President of Garden State Street Medicine, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to provide free preventive and acute urgent care services for the homeless. He is also the co-founder of his own unique medical practice, Mobile Medicine NJ & House call Doctors. He is also currently pursuing an Executive MBA and a Master’s of Science in Healthcare Leadership at Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
References
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/02/19/sleep-deprivation-hospitals/
- https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2021/july/minimizing-disruption-maximizing-sleep-in-the-hospital
- https://www.healthline.com/health/deep-sleep#sleepstages
