What does a hospital room look like? In addition, if someone is going to need round-the-clock care for a while, where would you put them?
Having been in plenty myself: Linoleum floors White walls Usually two beds, most often with white sheets and a weird stale pink colored blanket Some sort of thin, patterned curtains between the beds, suspended from the ceiling on a track so they can be pulled easily Medical equipment, EKG monitors, IV racks, etc... Generally they will have one TV between the two beds. And they smell really bad, like cleaners and anti-bacterial stuff.
Of course, there's always plenty of pictures at google images. https://www.google.com/search?q=hospital+room&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DcxNUrijLJT69gSA4ID4Cg&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=1356&bih=669&dpr=1 Some of these are pretty nice too as compared to the dumps I ended up in lol.
I think in this case it's easier for you to visit an actual hospital yourself and ask staff members these things. Of course, I'm not aware of your situation or where you live, but that was my first thought. From the things I've read about authors and research, experts and general people seem to be quite open when talking to a writer about their experiences and thoughts. It'll be good for your other senses, too: smell, hearing, taste, touch. You can use them for your book and grab the reader's attention completely.
liz and alesia... i've been in plenty and have also worked in one... been an inpatient in army and air force base wards and public ones you've described, on up to a fancy private one in las vegas... and i know from all this personal experience that there's a vast difference between hospital rooms here and there... and even in the same hospital... they're not all bad as the ones you've seen/experienced... is this person indigent and in a ward or 'semi-private' room?... or wealthy enough for a private room? [some are even 'suites'!] are they in icu/ccu?... or not that ill/injured?
This is true, Maia. I've heard that there are some very, very nice rooms in maternity wards in hospitals in areas that are wealthy and have a lot of competition for maternity patients. I have very little experience in hospitals. The few rooms I've seen have been depressing and cold looking. Very clinical and basic.
Not really filthy but not appealing either. Every time I walk in a patient's room, you can smell that smell. Some sort of cleaning chemical. And you can taste the hospital food without literally tasting it. You just know what it is. Orange juice and mashed potatoes. Sorry if I am getting descriptive. What I think when I think of hospital rooms is that. So hopefully you can get an idea.
I was just going off my experiences. I've been in several different hospitals (mostly in the US and the state of CA in particular) and they all pretty much looked how I said.
It really depends on a ward and a hospital. Paediatric ward looks different to obstetric ward, looks different to surgical ward, looks different to ICU ward, looks different to dementia ward... You get the point. Main differences you'll see are in standard of cleanliness, how worn out/new the furnishings are, how many beds per room and what is the nurse to patient ratio. Some hospitals, you'll have patients screaming in pain, calling for help, and simply they have to wait because all the staff is busy. In others you'll have cleaners disinfect every inch of the single rooms (with a bathroom and a balcony) every four hours, everything is new and every time you press a buzzer a nurse is with you within seconds. And champagne is on the menu. Another difference is quality of food. But round the clock care (like hourly obs, which are usually vital signs measurement, blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, urine output if they have a bag and anything else specifically related to their condition) I'd put them near the nurses' station, and if they need to be directly observed, then in view of. And if they need constant supervision, then a nurse would be sitting next to them.
My uncle had a bad heart, suffered cardiac arrest while on a business trip to Denmark (or maybe Sweden) after having quadruple bi-pass surgery in Blackrock clinic in Dublin. After his Scandinavian emergency treatment he was flown by helicopter back to Blackrock. When we went to see him the foyer had it's own tropical waterfall and the reception girls were dressed more like concierges than hospital staff. The whole place was amazing, something you'd see on a Hollywood movie. It was almost tea-time when we got there and he was sitting up in bed in a suite with a leather-bound menu flicking through hundreds of channels on a massive flat screen tv! My auntie on the other didn't have such good insurance cover. She was in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit, Duchess) in a public hospital called the Maher. If any of our Dublin members are reading, they may know the building itself is a throw back to Victorian times - utterly cold and miserable which wreaked of bleach. To see her in the ICU we had to be buzzed in to a tiny chamber the size of a phone box one at a time, our shoes were sprayed with some kind of disinfectant then we'd to but blue, elasticated, plastic covers over our shoes. There was a soap dispenser with a two minuter which meant the buzzer went after 2 minutes of hand scrubbing - then we were buzzed through to the actual ICU. She was rigged up to all sorts of machines - I'm sure some of them could change the traffic lights out on the street! A nurse was seated beside her bed 24/7 watching clocks and metres and levels while her blood constantly transfused. That was scary!
duchess... the bottom line is that there is no 'standard' hospital room or round-the-clock care set-up... the differences, as you can see from our various firsthand experieces above, are so great that you can pick whichever best fits your character's medical situation and economic/social level...
Like others have said, varies from hospital to hospital even within the same country/city. In Finland, in public hospitals, there's generally at least 6-8 beds in one room with those curtains you can pull around your bed. ICU and recovery rooms are a bit different, the latter having less machinery by the beds and they're generally a bit cozier. And for some reason, there's always an old codger in the bed next to yours with tubes up his nose (and here their food of choice always seems to be curdled milk that they eat messily). My memories are a bit hazy since whenever I've been treated in the ER or ICU, I've been pretty out of it, and the times I've been in recovery rooms, well, again, I've been pretty out of it, waking up from anesthesia. The atmosphere in recoveries are significantly mellower, though. Once a nurse offered me and the random old codger two glasses of cheap brandy to increase the effects of our painkillers since they had already given us so many opiates that more would've been dangerous (according to the staff). ERs are the most fun/exciting though, as a patient: I once spent around 5-6 hours getting patched up in one (just one bed there, in the center of the room) with two surgeons, one supervising physician/doctor (dunno what they call it in English, but his job was to supervise the whole procedure), and two nurses (one kept bringing in gear like sutures and stuff when they ran out) and the other nurse just stood by my bed and now and then asked how I was feeling, whether he needed to loosen up the IV or whatever. I did ask, but can't remember the name of the meds they gave me during the procedure, but they made the time fly by. That's about all I can dig up from those hazy memories.
