Hospital Roommates: An Interview With a Terminally Ill Patient

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to initiate discussion of the responsibility of the healthcare provider for monitoring and improving the quality of the impact of roommates on one another. As a method of opening that discussion, we present a case in which the interaction with roommates became a decisive factor governing the quality of a series of hospitalizations for a terminally ill patient. The patient was interviewed in his home and gave permission for us to share his observations with the healthcare community. The transcript of the interview is presented to raise a very common, but underexplored problem in providing hospital care: the selection and placement of hospital roommates and the responsibility of nursing and other hospital professionals in alleviating the negative impact of certain roommates. Following the transcript, we explore systematically the problems the healthcare provider faces and some possible solutions.