"Good nursing care but noise nuisance!"

A member of my family was recently admitted to a 6 bedded surgical ward for a very prolonged stay in hospital and throughout that time he was continually disturbed by other patients on their phones. The issue was that these people insisted on having their entire conversation on loud speaker and did not feel the need to put the phone to their ear or use headphones. Not only did they insist on doing this for calls with their friends and family but also to watch videos and use social media. There was no respect of other people in the room and attempts to keep their volume down. Curtains are not exactly soundproof so others around him would have been aware he had just had surgery and had bad news, but still the use of phones on loudspeaker continued well in to the evening as he tried to rest from his operation. On one occasion a patient took a call around midnight and still had it on speaker phone! None of the staff challenged him on this although they were clearly aware it was going on. This behaviour was not confined to one or two individuals as he was in long enough for several patients admitted/discharged and this appeared to be the norm. 

In addition, beds around him were frequently surrounded by groups of visitors when the ward explicitly states two visitors to a bedside. Whilst we were grateful that visiting hours were fairly open throughout the day, maybe there needs to be a return to stricter visiting hours in multi-bedded rooms to allow patients to rest and not continually endure the noise from other people's visitors. In addition, perhaps the use of phones when used without headphones could be confined to these hours in multi-bedded rooms. 

I was disappointed that the staff on the ward did not intervene and allowed these behaviours to continue whilst others around them were trying to recover from surgery. Surely, staff can intervene and advise patients on ward policy on visitors and ask them to abide to this. There also needs to be signage about respectful use of phones so that staff can intervene if this is not being adhered to. Perhaps the ward could keep a stash of cheap headphones that these individuals can purchase for a few pounds to prevent them having phones continually on speaker.

My family member is going to feedback himself about overall care in the ward as he was very grateful to the nurses and medical staff for their care and wanted to separate it from this experience; It's such a shame his whole experience in the ward was blighted by the continual noise and lack of rest.