[MelissaRN]

the other night I was caring for my patient who was sharing a room with a younger man. Anyway, my patient was incontinent of stool a couple of times and the smell was pretty bad. The poor young man in the other bed was almost gagging. He had us spraying the room down. Also having confused patients that stay up all night hollering and keeping the patient in the next bed awake stinks too. Here they are trying to recover from surgery and they've got to listen to this confused guy hollering all night.

[nialloh]

Originally Posted by Rapheal

Have you ever had 2 patients who were attention seeking room together? They tend to feed off each other and become a real nursing headache. I really dislike that situation.

Try having 2 drug seekers in the same room. They swap med. and symptom info, and are soon complaining of, and asking for, the same thing. That was a fun night.

[mamabear]

Originally Posted by SmilingBluEyes

In the USA, semi-private rooms are by their very nature, HIPAA violations in the making. At least IMO. There is NO way to maintain total privacy in compliance with HIPAA in this situation, what with the other patient AND his/her family around. I was hospitalized in January for major surgery related to a pregnancy loss and I remember my roommate and her family telling me they were sorry for my loss. I had never said a word to them. See what I mean?

I've been wondering about the HIPPA thing for a long time. How DO they get around it? It's not so bad on a psych unit, where most of the patients are up, dressed, and ambulatory (except for the borderlines who manage to get into a snit about one thing or another).

[missmercy]

Originally Posted by teeituptom

I konda miss the old days when we had Wards

not rooms

Sad to say -- we still do!! We have a few rooms on each unit that house 3 patients each -- they are made to hold 4, but administration has graciously granted that we may need some space for the equiptment that accompanies these patients. Most patients who end up in those "rooms" are a bit less than excited about sharing the space with a crowd -- and when you add a couple of visitors a piece -- it can get a bit cozy! But when we move to our new facility -- there will be only private rooms, with plenty of space and light for all!! ( the land of milk and honey? That's a ways down the road though!!)

[Streamlined]

I couldn't take the bruises anymore and finally quit the med/surg unit in the high-ranking hospital I once worked at mainly for the semi-private room issue. I'd say 50% of my time was spent moving patients--their beds, their stuff, their bedside commodes, their families--over incompatible roomates. The kicker was that each semi-private room was originally designed to be a single and the architect had somehow forgotten to factor in the need for closets. So here you had two beds and two scabbed on storage lockers that protruded into the room, you had two miserable little patients trapped in their beds because the nurse could literally not get at them, what with the surrounding chairs that the visitors sat in, the IV poles , the bedside potty (that visitors usually sat in not knowing there was probably a pool of pee right under them), the wadded-up SCD's---I think you can all picture this,right? No CNA that I have ever worked with has ever figured out how to clear a path to the patient. And forget about an RN knowing how to do this. We all just change our behavior and alter our common sense to squeeze ourselves into this space long enough to give pills, listen to complaints about roomates, answer a few questions. While you're therre, you bump your trochanteric process on the siderail of the bed behind the curtain. Two days laterr, you wonder how the hell you got that bruise. I stuck it out for 20 years. I kept waiting for the architect of that hospital to show up as a patient so I could give him a piece of my mind, show him by bruises, and apologize for not being able to start a new IV because I couldn't exactly reach him, but he (and you know it was a he) never showed up.

[?burntout]

Originally Posted by Rapheal

Have you ever had 2 patients who were attention seeking room together? They tend to feed off each other and become a real nursing headache. I really dislike that situation.

Yes...it is horrible. I have a huge H/A when I get home...

[DOCS RN]

Tom, you must be around my age if you remember wards......or worked at a VA Hospital.

[jax]

I liked the wards, you could eyeball everyone at a glance, and if confused Mr Smith in the corner was climbing out of bed, you had 6 people on the buzzer to let you know.

I feel uncomfortable being stuck in a single room with a patient for an extended period of time, and not knowing what's going on in all the others.
Of course these worries could be allayed if the nurse to patient ratio decreased....

jax

[ksfrn66]

I am all for private rooms! In the ICU that I worj there are 4 private rooms and one "big room" that has 3 beds in it. Is most definitely co-op most of the time! One of the cardiologist calls it the "apartment"! It is very bad when the pt in bed 6 codes and the pts in Beds 5 and 7 are completely with it!!!

[mamabear]

Originally Posted by ?burntout

Yes...it is horrible. I have a huge H/A when I get home...

That's what I meant in my earlier post, where I made reference to borderlines on psych units: they are the worst!