I run HOSPITALS, not health spas!

[Pagan]

Such rooms are used first for patients who may be....or who are ill with a contagious disease.

Like when my dad almost died from bacterial meningitis.

"Sure, we've got a private room just opened! I think they'll have decontaminated it from the plague victim who died in there last night by now. I'll get you moved straight in."

Rapscallion

Heh, around here, that could be the truth!

[Jay 2K Winger]

When I was in the hospital as a youngster to get a thyroglottal duct cyst removed, I shared a room with another boy who was having some kind of surgery (don't remember specifically). (This was more than 20 years ago, mind.)

Whenever my mom goes into the hospital to deal with the cellulitis that develops in her leg, she always has a room to herself. (Though my mom hasn't had that problem since she started getting her legs wrapped in bandages to help her circulation. She's lost at least 14 pounds since she started this treatment, too!)

[boringscreenname]

At the hospital I had my son we were told at the tour, they tried to give everyone private rooms. But if they got busy or full we'd have to share rooms. I understood because this hospital delivers the most babies in our state and it's fairly common for them to deliver 20-25 babies a day.

After I had my son I asked whether I'd be put in a private or shared room, and requested a private room if one was available which they gave me.

[Sapphire Silk]

Strange, in the hostpitals around me, all rooms are private (one person in a room). They apparently have to be to prevent a patient clearly hearing the medical conditions or problems of another (which apparently violates the HIPAA laws from what we were told). One hospital has doubled in size (or is in the process of it) as they lost half their capacity due to this.

Yeah, but the price of the bed has probably doubled.

I've been hospitalized with and without roommates. I've never had a problem with a roommate, and usually enjoyed the company. In a private room, as someone else pointed out, I was completely bored and eager to go home. In my case just as well as I wasn't really that sick (simple surgery).

I feel for the folks who are sick enough to have to spend weeks in the hospital, and who get stuck in private rooms. They go bonkers from boredom. I think patients do a lot better with company.

The first hospital I worked in had 4 bed semi private rooms. We never put women in there: more than 2 women to a room, and they fight like cats. We DID put any male patient who whined too much in one of those rooms. They always "man'ed up" at once.

[Dips]

At pediatric hospitals they usually let parents stay in the same room as a child. I've never had a problem with any of the patients my son shared a room with but their parents were a different story.

Mostly we just maintained a nice fiction of privacy and pretended we weren't hearing and seeing much more than what we needed to or wanted to.

Others were very outgoing and we went out of our way to talk to each other.

Either worked for me and I took my cue from what the other family felt was comfortable. I'd be friendly and cordial enough to say hello (you can only take a polite fiction so far, after all) but not push myself on them.

But a few were just inconsiderate jerks who acted like the they OWNED the entire room/floor/unit. They'd leave pub covered soap and wet towels all over the shower floor. Have 16 loud visitors in the room while my son was trying to sleep. Glare at me every time I had to use the shared bathroom. Grab furnishings from our side of the room without asking if we were using them. The worst of the worst deliberately sprayed urine all over a shared family bathroom in a pediatric CICU because my daughter politely knocked on the door to make sure someone wasn't using it before just barging in.

Not surprisingly a lot of them were also SCs to the staff.

Having a child in the hospital is stressful. Believe me, I certainly get that. But it's not an excuse to treat others in the exact same situation like that.

[Custard Chick]

Hell, I had to spend a couple nights in the hospital for severe dehydration when I was a kid, and I was put in a bed in the HALLWAY because all the rooms were filled to capacity! And my mom WORKED at the hospital I was staying in!