Do patients get jealous and/or mad at the other patient's visitors

[DesiDani]

And how can nurses help? The roommate is nice, but a patient will hate to admit it but his family makes them angry and resentful. No one has visited them in days and if they did it was briefly.

[crazin01]

Interesting question. While I've never had a patient verbalize to me they are somewhat jealous of their roommates family, I'm sure that happens, probably more often than we would think. And then of course, we have the sweetest patient who gets the bad luck of having a jerk roommate with a less-than-considerate family as well. I know a few times, we've moved people around with others on the floor, to allow for a more pleasant environment. Also moved patients around so the 40 year old chest pain gets some rest for tomorrow's 0600 heart cath when rooming with an 80-year-old dementia screamer who doesn't sleep & is noisy.

I think the saddest ones are nursing home residents, admitted for a simple UTI or something, who has no family to visit for days.