The reason I ask is that occasionally somebody will have to be moved from a semiprivate room to a private room until they've ruled out for something infectious. Does the other patient occupying the room have any right to know that they may have been exposed to something?
I had had a patient moved once until they were ruled out for flu and her roommate had cancer. We weren't able to tell the roommate anything but she was so afraid that she'd been exposed to something while her immune system was weakened that she was crying. Even if we did tell her exactly what was going on with the woman who was moved, she may not have felt better but I always wondered if there was a better way to go about the whole process.
