My Ultimate Hospital Room

During my takedown surgery at Jefferson Hospital I had the luxury of getting a small tour of their executive hospital rooms.  These are the rooms that the rich and famous stay in while at Jefferson Hospital.  Though it was steps above what I was staying in, it was still just a hospital room.  So much can be done to make a hospital room feel more like home and speed up the recovery process.

The first thing I would do to my ultimate hospital room is paint.  I feel institutionalized in the stark white rooms.  I would paint the walls either blue, green, or yellow.  Even a beige would be better than white.  I would also add color to the sheets, blankets, and pillow cases.  Next would be to add a picture or two on the walls.  How hard could it be to have some schools students make pictures during art class to hang on the walls?  I would also add a rug to the floor.  Those tile floors are like ice when you have to get up to go to the bathroom.  And if you have IBD, you are always going to the bathroom.  I have to mention the box office hospital rooms I saw were wall to wall carpeted, all I'm asking for is a rug.  This would bring some life into the hospital room.

Next would be to have a thermostat that works.  Every hospital room I am in it is either freezing cold or hot as a sauna.  There is no middle ground, and forget trying to create one.  I would also install a dimmer on the light over the bed.  They already give you the options of extremely bright, not quite bright enough, and dark.  It would be nice to have a dimmer.  Then I would have to option of reading during the night without waking up the entire floor.  Another room upgrade would be sound proofing.  While you are in the hospital you hear every noise from every room from every floor of the hospital.  It is impossible to get the sleep they say you need.  Sound proofing would go a long way in a hospital room.

Hospitals today have been getting better at upgrading their televisions so the patients can see them from their beds, but why do they have to pay extra when the hospital bills are high enough already?  What else are patients supposed to do as they recover from illness, injury, or surgery?  It's not like we can get up and go shopping.  We are stuck in a bed in a room.  Speaking of television, it would also be nice to get more than 5 channels.  We all know you have cable, give us the full package.  I get tired of watched TLC, Discovery or my local news.  How many 19 Kids and Counting episodes do I have to watch before it's classified as torture?

My final upgrade isn't to the hospital room itself, but to the whole floor.  The doctors and nurses tell you to walk and walk and walk and walk some more to recover faster.  There is nothing fun by walking up and down the same 500 ft long stretch of hallway.  I feel like I have entered the crazy ward and I am stuck to pace back and forth until the end of the world has come.  Please install a walking path that goes around the floor and has things to look at along the way.  Windows outside that show a park or wildlife instead of another building would be nice.  Maybe like the children's floor, we adults can have a fun room to walk to.  This would give us some motivation to get off our butts.

I have to say the number one thing of any hospital room is that it be private.  Now that I have stayed in private hospital rooms, I could never go back to having a roommate.  This is barbaric, and I'm happy to see many hospitals adding private rooms.  The last thing you want when at a hospital is someone lying next to you in worse shape than you.