Hospital Daze

Last week my husband had surgery, so we had another hospital adventure. (He's fine, breaking all records for recovery.) A few comments. In an effort to improve patient satisfaction (isn't that what they always say?) someone, anyone, is supposed to stop by every hour to see how the patient is doing. This is commendable, except that during his two days there, every single time he dozed off, someone knocked or entered with a cheery greeting. Oddly enough, this didn't make him feel cared for. I immediately noticed that the door to the bathroom in his room opened in the wrong direction. The knob was on the hall side of the door instead of the room side. I had to step into the hallway to open it. No privacy, especially for a patient in one of the fashionable hospital gowns that still flap in the back. And patients can't duck in and out quickly. They're patients. They move slowly, sometimes with walkers or canes. This isn't rocket science. I can't believe a reasonably intelligent designer couldn't figure that one out. In the bathroom itself, there was a grab bar next to the toilet, and there was a towel rack right in front of it. I'm not sure what it was for. There were paper towels at the sink and while there was a shower, all linens were tossed in the laundry hamper. I can guarantee, because I did it myself, that people will automatically reach for it because it's so close. I predict an accident, or at the very least, two unsightly holes in the wall, when someone accidentally pulls it off. I've also noticed that in many hospitals, the lights are mounted on the wall with an on/off cord. The beds are so far away from the wall that the nurses have to tie the cord to the side of the bed so the patient can reach it. One very young nurse said that she once pulled the cord out of the light fixture when she had to move the bed and forgot to untie it. She wondered why the lights were so far away. Being old, that is to say, experienced, I was able to explain to her that when this hospital was built decades ago, the bed was basically an iron cot with side rails, and the top of the bed was up against the wall. If you needed to sit up, the nurse would stuff a couple of pillows behind you. The lights were perfectly placed. Now the new-fangled beds have so much equipment that the patient's head is two feet from the wall. I have to wonder why someone doesn't move the lights. Should I be worried that in these increasingly high-tech facilities, they can't seem to figure out how to make doors and lights work efficiently? I think I'm better off not thinking about it, don't you?