Is it so nasty diseases/bugs (MRSA, C Diff,etc) don’t take up residence or is there some other reason a hospital thermostat needs to be set so low?
I’ve never been to several hospitals that could double as freezers. :eek:
That second sentence seems to mean the opposite of the first. 
Ignore the never, it was supposed to be deleted.
I was at two different hospitals over the last week. I didn’t find either cold. For me.
A tee shirt and regular shirt and I was fine. I’m healthy at 54 years old. I took no notice of the temp, so I suspect it was about 70F. It was about 50-60 F outside.
My mother was chilly at one of them, but is 85 years old and 105lbs. She also has circulatory problems. She wore about 3-4 layers.
I did note that there where warming blankets available in one of the waiting rooms.
It’s easier to warm up, than cool down would be my only answer.
I have found the ORs of the hospital nearby me to be quite cold when they first bring me in (needless to say, it doesn’t matter for very long since I don’t get to experience it for very long before getting knocked out). The rest of the hospital has always been a reasonable temperature for me.
Every hospital I’ve been in has been intolerably hot. Could you give me a list of cold ones for future use?
Around here they seem to air condition them to meat-locker condition. But most large buildings are that way around here. IMO mostly a matter of trying mostly to de-humidify and accepting whatever temperature results. Running the AC to wring out the moisture and then running a heating plant to re-heat the air to a comfortable temperature would be too much, even for as environmentally profligate an area as this.
This. I have never been in any hospital, whether as a patient (plenty) or visitor that couldn’t have doubled as a tropical-plant hothouse.
My initial response was going to be that the cold enhanced the clotting ability of the blood. Thankfully I googled it and found that just the opposite was true, warmer ambient temps helped blood clotting.
Next was slowing the spread of germs but that also fell apart.
I thought maybe just comfort for the doctors and nurses. That seems to have some traction.
Finally, as LSLGuy says,“mostly to de-humidify and accepting whatever temperature results”. This seems to be the main reason. Hot sweaty bodies are hard to work with, for example trying to get the patches for EKG’s and other tests to stick when wet. The dry cold air also limits mold and mildew problems.
This dichotomy suggests an explanation. Perhaps hospitals seem cold to those in warm southern climates and seem warm to those in cool climates because they are regulated to a set temperature regardless of season or outdoor weather. Where I live we have cold winters and hot summers and no one would normally have his home air conditioning set to the same temperature in summer as the heat setting in winter – it would be set far warmer. If it was set to the same temperature as it is in winter, it would feel like, well, walking into a meat locker. I’ve sometimes felt that way walking into the house on a hot day even when the thermostat setting was some 10 degress F warmer than it would be in winter.
Around here I’ve certainly always had the sense that hospitals were relatively warm, but I may only have been in one or noticed in the winter.
I can state specifically that X-ray Depts are, on average, on the cooler side due to need to keep X-ray-producing tubes cool and not overheating anode (part that makes the actual x-rays) to extend use/life of tube parts - limiting the ability to put patients through as quickly as possible. This was prevalent in many Depts I worked in, fwiw. X-ray tubes get VERY hot quickly if patient is obese (more power/heat needed) and/or multiple scans needed serially on one patient. Cooling time is a major part of how fast a spiral-scan can be done and at what power level, etc.
An example: A Level 1 Trauma Center I worked at would often have near-continuos exams of high-level heat-load exams on the tube which increased the time between exams/slices. Keeping room cooler meant ability to cool the anode (part of x-ray producing device that receives the ‘spark’ that produces the X-rays) cooler so as to increase throughput of those awaiting scan before surgery. I definitely noticed a huge difference once when A/C was out for a few hours one time - tube-cooling got to be a seriously limiting factor. And temp only rose to around ~80F in exam room, IIRC -v- usual 68-70 degrees (ever notice X-ray Techs wearing sweaters or such during summer months?). Efficiency of throughput decline was enough to really piss off the Trauma Diretor as to why scans were taking so long. Tube-cooling time-curve is critical at time of exam during life/death situations, etc…IME, anyways
There is also the issue of lessening mold and other infective growth(s), but no idea on how much that is a factor in X-ray/CT Dept, or hospital overall, fwiw. I’ve been in numerous hours-long surgeries where everyone had to have pretty much full-body protective garb on, and if it was not cool/cold in OR, we’d have been some really uncomfortale dripping-sweat persons, if that makes sense.