Sometimes, do doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel scare the hell out of you with what appears to be total incompetence and lack of common sense?

My Father In Law, who is 86, has been in ICU for the last week, due to complications caused by falling. Well, he was perfectly lucid before the accident, but since his surgery he’s been acting out; combative, hallucinating, talking crazy. Long story short, I contacted a doctor friend of mine and he said Dad is suffering from “ICU Syndrome” or psychosis, and it’s quite common, especially in the elderly. The BIGGEST cause of it is sleep deprivation because he can’t get a good chunk of sleep. How hard is it to fix that? However, when he does finally get some sleep, within 30 minutes someone is coming in to draw blood, or a family member comes in yelling, “Hi GEORGE! HOW YA DOIN!” Is it too much to expect the staff to hold off on getting the blood, or to counsel the family NOT to wake him up and the importance of keeping their voices down and themselves quiet and above all, enforce the “two visitors only” rule? At times he had six and seven family members in his room!

Well, he’s been out of ICU since 3:00 yesterday, so we’re hoping for some improvement. However, after a long, thrashing night last night, he finally went into a deep sleep at about 8:00 this morning…and an hour later the nurses come bustling in to clean him up, give him a wash cloth bath, change his sheets (which means getting him out of bed into a chair)....It really makes you wonder if they don’t have a clue, especially since it’s so common!