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Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

designweek.co.uk

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Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#101

Post by iancmceachern »

daok wrote: post #94
neonhomer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the marble lobbies, the art, the concierges at the front desk - our hospitals look like not five-star hotels - seven-star hotels. Is there specific examples of these hospitals? I've never seen anything that extravagant in any of the hospitals in Pittsburgh.

Living in California I can tell you that there is free parking with valets. You can charge your electric car and the lobby is definitely not looking bad at all. In one hospital, in Washington, there was a super high ceiling with a piano where a musician comes sometimes during the day to play. It's not everywhere like these two examples, but I've seen a couple where the level was way higher than in Canada or Europe.

Living in SF I can tell you there are hospitals that charge $35/hr to park there while in the ER

Edited to correct typo

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#102

Post by cameronbrown »

jsmith99 wrote: post #85
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #39

When not in hospital, we suggest people need mental stimulation, exercise, good food and daylight to stay healthy and sane. None of these things are possible when you're convalescing. Don't get me wrong, I'm _very_ thankful for the fact I still have both my legs, but staying sane is extremely difficult. Half of the bays on my ward literally had no windows. There were people around me that hadn't seen daylight in over…

I'm assuming you're in the UK? The hospitals I've used in London had plenty of art in corridors, but not in the wards. They also had a library of sorts: a bookshelf on wheels that the volunteers could bring round on request. They also had free WiFi that clashed somewhat with the signs warning not to use mobile phones. The built in pay TV and phone was ghastly though - I assume its to price gouge old patients as every…

> The built in pay TV and phone was ghastly though - I assume its to price gouge old patients as everyone else I saw was using their own device.

It's always been like this unfortunately. Nothing to do with smartphones.

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#103

Post by chiefalchemist »

> It also found that 16 out of 19 clinical staff working in the children’s emergency department noted that zoo-themed digital art, showing moving images of animals, improved young patients’ anxiety, while 15 out of 19 clinicians said it decreased their pain.

What I find interesting/odd is that the article focuses on the patients. Yet makes no mention of the art's affect on the doctors and staff

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#104

Post by robocat »

Ensorceled wrote: post #6
d--b wrote: post #2

No shit Sherlock! You know what makes patients feel better too? Super large rooms with a lot of light, and designer furniture. Add quality meals and perhaps people will feel ok in hospitals...

Quality meals ... when my dad had his heart surgery his first solid meal was a low quality, high-fat hamburger on a plain white bun (no tomato or lettuce, just ketchup), salad with enough ranch dressing for 4 salads and a plastic container with peaches soaked in syrup (ie. HFCS). I was horrified. I mentioned it to his cardiologist who, to his credit, went on a rant about how the food seems to be especially chosen to…

Perhaps it is more nuanced than that: getting the patient to eat after surgery is probably the most important thing - and perhaps burgers are the way to do that for the majority of patients?

A quick Google of keywords (weight loss after cardiac surgery) shows papers with sentences like "Patients who lost weight faced a significantly increased risk of mortality than those who experienced no changes or gained weight after surgery", and "We conclude that obesity confers a survival advantage in the setting of the CABG surgery", "While various large-scale randomized controlled studies evaluated different post-operative nutrition strategies in rather mixed cohorts of critically ill patients, only few small clinical studies specifically investigated its effects in cardiac surgery patients. In these studies, malnutrition has been reported to increase morbidity and mortality after cardiac surgery".

I agree it is obvious that good food is best, but or hard to know what the actually constraints are. I think it is unlikely the NHS will put on a nice entrecôte de boeuf!

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#105

Post by chiefalchemist »

gwillen wrote: post #24
jdietrich wrote: post #12

Before everyone piles in with their opinion, has anyone actually found the research mentioned in this article? I've searched quite thoroughly, but I can't find any sign that it has actually been published anywhere. I did find the paper from 2004 and was not impressed. http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/resources/research/documen...

Indeed not, and I am EXTREMELY skeptical of the claim that birth times are reduced TWO HOURS (!!!) by the addition of art. That's the kind of effect you see in papers that get retracted for outright fraud, let alone dubious and irreproducible studies.

Don't discount the placebo effect. Just because you can't see it, just because you can't measure it, don't mean something doesn't exist.

The placebo effect is scientifically recognized. It is real. Let's be mindful not to dismiss it - like it or not.

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#107

Post by awillen »

giarc wrote: post #37
awillen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does sound like a pretty insane recurring cost. Doesn't seem like there's any need for really valuable art that requires insurance when murals, photos and reproductions of the same nice art would do it. Hopefully they just replaced that all with something much cheaper.

I think you could deduce that no pieces would be of substantial value. No one would loan a valuable piece to a hospital knowing that it's likely going to be put in a public hallway and potentially touched or damaged many times a day.

If you're paying 65k for insurance, the pieces are valuable. They could well be behind glass or protected in other ways.

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#108

Post by anonoholic »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #20
JulianMorrison wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever looked at a seemingly clean surface with a UV light? It's surprising how much invisible ick there is, and it pops out since it visibly fluoresces. This might be a useful way to see the spills?

Yes, that's another verification tool they use for highly contagious (think HIV / AIDS / HEP-C) patients. However, those lights are usually handheld and small. Expecting cleaning staff to cover 100% of all walls each time they cleaned it (which is multiple times a day) is prone to failure. Plus those lights work best when the room is dark. Which means you could only clean it at night. And some rooms have multiple pat…

"think HIV / AIDS / HEP-C"

Think viable transmission vectors for those diseases.

Re: Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain

#110

Post by merpnderp »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #39

When not in hospital, we suggest people need mental stimulation, exercise, good food and daylight to stay healthy and sane. None of these things are possible when you're convalescing. Don't get me wrong, I'm _very_ thankful for the fact I still have both my legs, but staying sane is extremely difficult. Half of the bays on my ward literally had no windows. There were people around me that hadn't seen daylight in over…

Where is this? In the US I’ve never seen a hospital without windows and free tv. Although gyms are different, likely because if you are healthy enough to hit the gym you are healthy enough to go home.

Although one thing that always stood out is no one is expected to sleep in a hospital. A nurse or doctor will likely be in every few hours doing something to wake you up. And in between there will always be noise from the hall.

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