Here’s how hospitals are actually making us sicker

It seems counterintuitive, but the same place you go to get better when you’re sick might actually be making you worse. At least, that’s the conclusion one doctor reached in his writing for The New York Times.

One reason hospitals might be making us sicker? It all comes down to hospital design, writes Dhruv Khullar, M.D., a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. And it can make hospitals hotbeds for illness, injury, and poor mental health.

Nearly a third of ICU patients in high-income countries get new infections while hospitalized, mainly because they’re all squished in together—which also makes it harder to sleep amid already unsafe noise levels.

In fact, hospitals could save money by offering private rooms, since they’d have fewer illnesses to treat, Dr. Khullar writes.

Lack of private space could also make people less forthcoming about their medical histories, leading to uninformed treatment plans.

It’s also common for people to fall in the hospital due to slippery floors and bad lighting, and nurses aren’t always stationed where they can spot these accidents and help immediately.

On top of that, the sterile, impersonal settings have measurable physical effects. Dr. Khullar cites a study by architecture professor Roger Ulrich showing that gallbladder surgery patients recover faster with views of trees rather than brick walls.

Other research has shown that people with bipolar disorder make it out of the hospital more quickly when their rooms are brighter, and psychiatric patients require fewer meds when they have pictures of nature in their rooms.

Dr. Khullar recommends hospitals decentralize nursing stations, use better air filters and more cleanable surfaces, install sound-proofing panels, and provide more light. Those are some things he believes can help make hospitals safer.

You can’t change how hospitals are designed, but you can make yourself less susceptible to their problems.

MedlinePlus advises taking advantage of the hand sanitizers in hospitals, avoiding close contact with patients, and exercising the precautions you normally would to avoid getting sick. And a pair of earplugs could help you rest up.