Hospitals v. Hotels Hospitals Are Basically Hotels

Hospitals v. Hotels

Hospitals are basically hotels and can be evaluated in the same way.

There was a time in the not so recent past when doctors were sacred and individuals would take anything that they said to heart, as the saying "doctor knows best" triumphed over all. People went to hospitals with the pure intention of getting better, the desire to become stronger and take the physicians advice, as always, into careful consideration. Though, hospitals are not taking the concept of patient care to a whole new level and trying to make the hospitals stays for patients as comfortable as possible, taking pointers from hotels; this in turn begs the question, are hospitals basically hotels and should they be evaluated in the same way? The answer is undoubtedly, no for one main reason- hospitals and hotels have two different end goals with the individuals that stay there and thus, one cannot compare the two different types of buildings.

In the past, "hospitals were built for function and not for comfort, and little thought was put in to how the environment might make a patient feel"- and though hospitals might may to and "hygiene is important to the physical health of their patient, the cold sterile environment usually makes a visit to the hospital even less enjoyable than it needs to be (McCarthy). Though the main point of individual stays in hotel or hospitals, there is an entirely different context for which they are staying. A hospital's main purpose is to treat those that are ill and sick and need to get better. The staff of the hospital has a different goal in mind than that of a hotel worker, as they are in the business of hospitality. Though hospitals may grow increasingly aware of how they present the hospital itself, the actual staffing of the hospital is not changing to make people's stays more pleasant. Doctors and hospitals underlying function and purpose in society is to be a place where medical attention can be sought for ailments, and for it to look and feel like a hotel is an added bonus for patients but is not the goal for hospitals; thus, hospitals are not basically hotels and should not be evaluated the same way.

Furthermore, aside from the difference in staffing purposes from a hotel, the purpose for the hotel is to house people. "Hospitals are not hotels and once the medical reason for hospitalization has been adequate addressed it is up to the" doctor to discharge the patient (Gupta). It seems that some patients come to hospitals as a living option- but it is not that type of structure or premise that it was built on.