Get Well Sooner? A Healthier Roommate Could Help

And just exactly how is it determined which patient is sicker, and thus theoretically should benefit by having a healthier roommate? In my case I was hospitalized recovering from a critical illness that nearly killed me. I was exhausted, in pain, and could not even turn over on my own. But I was fairly alert and knew what was going on. My roommate appeared to have multiple health problems, plus dementia. She babbled loudly day and night and fought the nurses. I'm sure she had no idea who I was. We did not speak the same language. So how was I, as the "healthier patient," supposed to help her? Or shorten her hospital stay? (At 3 a.m. I did consider murdering her.) As it turned out, she shortened my stay. I demanded to go home because I couldn't get any sleep next to her, and the hospital told me there were no other beds available. My doc wanted me to stay another 3-to-5 days, but reluctantly agreed to discharge me after hearing my roommate's nonstop babbling. Going home early most certainly didn't help me medically, and it put a big strain on my family who then had to care for me. But at least I finally got some rest.

Wait. How can it be true both that "even in a particular room at the hospital and even among patients with a specific diagnosis, those who ended up with healthier roommates fared better" (para 5) and "placing a sick and a healthy patient in one room benefited the sicker patient without ill effects for the healthier roommate" (para 6, direct quote from Dr. Yakusheva).

Either having a healthier roommate provides benefits above having a sicker roommate -- in which case the sicker of two roommates hurts the healthier one -- or it doesn't. Or are you trying to say that the effect was only tested on the relatively sicker of two roommates, and the relatively more healthy of two roommates evidenced no effect at all?

That makes no sense: if having a healthier roommate is beneficial, that benefit would be reciprocal. Both roommates would benefit from a healthier roommate.

What this really looks like, frankly, is reversion to the mean: if you have two people, they will tend to average out. If you have a much larger population, the averaging effect will be much larger.

"What’s more, “placing a sick and a healthy patient in one room benefited the sicker patient without ill effects for the healthier roommate,” Ms. Yakusheva said."
this is the same nonsensical argument used for school integration. the idea that black students from the ghetto don't affect the academic achievement of affluent white white students.

Honestly. This whole thing sounds bogus. Who funded the "recent study"? It's ridiculous to expect hospital patients to "transfer important self-care knowledge" or "lend a helping hand" to a roommate. Sure, nice people are always willing to help others, but if you were in the hospital, would you want to be taking care of your roommate?

As a hospital RN of 25 years this article doesn't ring true. Patients are put in the next bed available most of the time. They are discharged when a physician writes the order to discharge. Roommate status is irrelevant.

So, what the title implies is that when you room with another patient in a hospital, it's better for your health if you're the less healthier one?

As an RN in Florida, our local hospital just spent several million dollars on a new tower with *only* private rooms. The reasoning was that with more peace and quiet of private rooms, patients would recover faster, saving millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Another unspoken reason? We have an explosion of admissions of people who need private rooms for communicable diseases: Active shingles, flu, tuberculosis, MRSA, VRE, and C. Diff. Especially C.Diff. And as this paper reported that the CDC had discovered last month: C. Diff is communicated to separate rooms by shared drainage systems. The wash sinks become the vectors for the disease. This makes me muse that our expensive new tower is already out-of-date, even before it opens.

I was kept overnight at a prestigious Upper East Side hospital after relatively minor surgery. My roommate was elderly, suffering, and in need of care. The nurses were not responding. I had to help her button her gown, get tissues, arrange her bed, etc. After several hours of this, at 8:00 in the evening after the offices had closed, I simply de-admitted myself, gathered up my things and walked out--and was better off sleeping on a friend's couch that night. Hospital roommates? No thanks!

This study must have been sponsored by a consortium of old cheap hospitals worried that other hospitals that design their rooms to provide patients with privacy are going to push them out of business.

Unless it's in a Critical Care Unit, I will refuse to have a roommate. That is uncivilized, frustrating and just asking for worse sleep deprivation. No thanks, I'll go home. Disgusting, especially for those of us with the need for extreme cleanliness. Just saying.

When I was recovering from multi abdominal organ surgery at Sloan, I was moved into a room with a very sick woman who had been there 2 months. She was angry and in a lot of pain and our shared bathroom was a mess. I ended up getting discharged too soon, as it was so terrible rooming with her. How I wish I could have had a private room.

did they control for the fact that having a healthier roommate makes everyone behave more healthily, thus making your body/immune system more able to recover

Interesting that my comment disappeared. Was it the fact that it wasn't complimentary enough? This article doesn't prove anything except that some people benefit from having roommates. Others don't. And we have no say over whether or not we have roommates because most insurance will not pay for a single room.

I had an experience that may or may not fit. I was put into a room with a guy who’d had the room to himself. Although in better physical condition than I, he was a little crazy and had evidently been left to his own devices. After moving me in, the head nurse later arrived and spoke to the man: “I am appalled by your personal hygiene!” It had been something like two weeks since he’d bathed, and the room smelled like it. For my benefit, she insisted that he must take better care of himself. This also got him walking around the floor more, since he was no longer alone. And it also determined me to get out of that hospital just as soon as they’d let me.

How about no roommates? Sick people shouldn't have to put up with the sounds and smells of another sick person, or even a well person. Also, there is no privacy for intimate discussions and exams with the doctor and nurse. There is the contagion factor as well. New hospitals tend to build or retrofit with single rooms, because as well know, "semi-private" really means "public." This ridiculous system, based on payment and not patient need, should end.

The healthiet patient does not want a sicker roommate just like a tennis player does not want to play against a weaker player if he or she wants to improve.

What about the healthier patients? Do they get sicker with a less healthy roommate?

My elderly mother consistently tested positive for infections carried by air or one that could be passed through the use of a shared bathroom. I always alerted the floor nurses to this information because the testing took more than one day to process before warning signs, masking and covering garments were required. Some nurses were polite and simply switched her to a private room; others let the process go forward and then switched her. Since the harm was not to my mother, I didn't protest their lack of action. As a family member of another patient, I would worry that incomplete testing of a roommate could cause harm to my family member, however. If a compromised immune system is a problem, a private room with careful ventilation and high standards for cleaning is important.

" A healthier roommate — particularly one with a similar condition — may be better able to transfer important self-care knowledge or even lend a helping hand, "

Seriously !?! Someone is PAYING for hospital care and they're expected to help out with sicker patients ?!?!

The entire premise is absurd. In any given pairing of roommates one is going to be healthier than the other so no matter how you shuffle people around half of all patients are going to be with someone sicker.

As for "peer effects:" Is anyone going to be exposed to a roommate for long enough for any beneficial "peer effect"?

Hire more staff and pay them more money !

Include loud snorers!

If there ever was a hypothesis in need of additional studies before it is considered valid, this is it. My skepticism comes not from disbelief but from the huge number of uncontrolled variables that might affect a hospital patient's recovery time. I've done hospital time for serious reasons and for me privacy, a continuously good nursing staff and being cared for by competent and compassionate hospitalists outweighs everything else.

It follows then that a healthier patient will be delayed in her/his recovery if a sicker patient is wheeled into the room. Sounds like a zero sum game to me. The benefits to the sicker person are taken from the healthier one. How does this conclusion properly inform any debate about patient treatment?

There would be exceptions of course but the hospital can be a lonely place. I imagine having a healthier roommate might just make the whole thing more bearable. If that is true, maybe having two or three healthier roommates would be even better.

Regardless of how healthy the roommate is, I've always felt that shared rooms offer the advantage that medical personnel enter the room and therefore assess the patients twice as often as a in a single-occupant room. I remember rounding on patients and either noticing our getting notified by the other patient in the room (not my patient) that they need some assistance.

While this study is interesting, having spent much too much time in hospital over the last several years, there is another element that seems to be overlooked--the design of the physical space. Most double rooms are designed so that one bed is by the window, and one by the door. With a moveable curtain between, that means one patient controls access to daylight and outside views.
If that patient is depressed,(and many are post surgery) that means the patient by the door is left in the dark for days. Someone needs to study the effect of access to outside light and views on healing.(Surely someone has by now?) In one room I shared, not only was the curtain between beds always closed, but my roommate kept the blinds drawn on the window. I felt like a mushroom in the constant dark. Yet when one roommate went home and I asked to be moved to the window side, the powers that be couldn't be bothered with changing their computer data.
Turning the design around, so that each bed faces the window at the foot of the bed, would make for a much healthier situation.

Add, healthier MD too. A doctor specialist came into work for my scheduled appointment, really sick. Got me "sicker" than I was at the time of visit. Looked like the Flu or a really awful cold. And of course the visit was awful. And insurance paid for it. I am still waiting for an apology. I don't see that MD anymore. I still can't believe that specialist didn't have the logical thinking, reasoning ability to cancel my appointment. Something was wrong with that MD's medical education. Not good enough. That doctor should have known better!