When my mother went to the hospital for some simple surgery, I was devastated at the condition of the hospital. I walked into his room the day after the surgery, and it was so cold that I was wishing I had brought a coat. He was out of his bed looking at the thermostat, and debating how to turn the temperature up. I asked him if there was something I could do, and he said that he wanted a HVAC tech in there to turn the blasted AC off. I talked to the nurse, and she explained that the air conditioning was kept so low, to keep germs and bacteria from growing. There was less chance of infection, if the air quality was good and if the temperature were lower. I understand lower, but this was low enough to cause my dad to shiver. He had heating blankets wrapped around him, and he had heating pads on his feet, yet he was still shivering. I checked to make sure he didn’t have a temperature, but his skin was too cold to tell, just by touch. I tried to adjust the thermostat, but it didn’t matter what we did, we couldn’t get the air conditioning to turn off. When the shift changed, I asked a different nurse about the thermostat and she came into the room. She began to shiver and she looked at the thermostat and tried to adjust it. Half an hour later, we had someone from maintenance in the room, and he was replacing the thermostat for my dad.