Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by jopsen » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 11:22 AM UTC

kartan wrote: post #16

I have been working in some fast-growing software companies. Every few years, we change office and get one in a better place, with new furniture, fancier each time, tv monitor is everywhere, each wall had pictures and was colourful. I had to go to the hospital, nothing serious. It was so extremely sad to see 30-40 years old furniture, dark rooms that had never been re-painted, power outlets had been refurbished for t…

Printing a some posters of public domain art should be fairly cheap.

Sure, you'll still need to do it and put them on the walls.

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

#142

Post by newsgremlin » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 11:34 AM UTC

The art would need to be something neutral or soothing that doesn't evoke strong emotions, something pleasant. I'd suggest Bob Ross style paintings to be the standard.

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

#143

Post by jaclaz » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

bin0 wrote: post #46

covercash wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, pretty much every hospital room I’ve been in has mystery stains on the ceiling. It’s so common that I’d point them out to my family members and we’d wonder out loud what the cause could have been. Edit: there was even one room where I put on rubber gloves and used the disinfectant wipes from the janitor’s cart to clean dried blood from my IV pole and the bed rails.

That depends to which tier of hospital you go. On the other end, of course, I have a friend who had to get treatment in Italy and was required to bring her own needles. This was in-patient surgery. Also, the nurse tried to re-use them and called her a "wasteful American" when she told her to get a clean one.

>On the other end, of course, I have a friend who had to get treatment in Italy and was required to bring her own needles. This was in-patient surgery. Also, the nurse tried to re-use them and called her a "wasteful American" when she told her to get a clean one.

Oww, come on, that is simply not true, in the last - say - 100 years in Italy (post WW1 emergencies).

So, either your friend is very, very old, or she is making it up for the benefit of folklore.

Until the '60's or maybe early '70's syringes and needles were not "use once and throwaway" but of course they were washed after every use and sterilized before a new use.

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

#144

Post by giarc » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #107

giarc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work at an 1100 bed hospital, the largest in Western Canada. We have 7 buildings on site, which is a lot of square feet. Additionally, when an insurance company sees the government as a client, I'm sure the pricing gets jacked a bit.

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

#145

Post by mhh__ » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

rolltiide wrote: post #123

mhh__ wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound out of place for some NHS hospitals

Can you shed insight on why the acceptance of the NHS is like a religion or seemingly tied to national identity so much? Modification or criticism of NHS seems like an off limits topic with UK residents, and it just seems like a weird topic to be off limits so I don't really understand

The NHS is a sacred cow of British politics and in my experience of talking to people both online and in person, most people have absolutely no idea how it compares to alternative systems.

Very few people realise, for example, that there are very few healthcare systems in Europe organised like the NHS yet most deliver better results. However, "insurance" is a dirty word because it's associated with American Healthcare rather than continental Europe.

7 countries spend more than healthcare (% of GDP) than us, but 17 score better on the EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index) and 17 have longer life expectancies.

It's also not viable politically (debate around the NHS, that is) because the Labour party is currently being run by it's socialist faction e.g. Some of Corbyn's lieutenants are proper marxists.

tl;dr it sounds like a religion because it is a religion to most

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

#146

Post by mhh__ » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

astonex wrote: post #127

rolltiide wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you shed insight on why the acceptance of the NHS is like a religion or seemingly tied to national identity so much? Modification or criticism of NHS seems like an off limits topic with UK residents, and it just seems like a weird topic to be off limits so I don't really understand

I don't think that's true. What we don't like is any talk of Americanising the NHS.

> What we don't like is any talk of Americanising the NHS

The difficulty is that "Americanisation" is this catch all term (Along with Neoliberalism etc.) that doesn't have a defined meaning, but is wide enough to beat any non-left wing solution into the ground. I don't think anyone actually wants the NHS to be more american, but most european healthcare systems have more in common with American one's than ours to some degree (Excluding universality, which it obviously lacks)

Imagine if the Orange Book was released now, with it's plans to introduce insurance to the NHS: I can picture the momentum activists screaming now.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/0... for example (old poll but still usable) 22% of people say the NHS is the best healthcare system in the world when it clearly isn't when measured by various measures most notably cancer outcomes which are pretty bad compared to some countries https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/110/1/5/278036

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

#147

Post by BuildTheRobots » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

telchar wrote: post #125

antris wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if you are healthy enough to hit the gym you are healthy enough to go home. Please don't perpetuate the myth that sickness can be seen from the outside by a layperson.

GP isn't wrong though, if you're well enough to go work out at the gym you don't need to be in a hospital taking up very expensive limited bed space. Treatment for a very sick people is often done outpatient or in non-hospital skilled nursing or residential facilities. Not looking sick doesn't factor in here. I'm assuming GGP was not referring to physical therapy facilities however, some hospital inpatients do requir…

There are a number of reasons people are kept in hospital and their ability to exercise may or may not factor into this.

I spent 10 weeks as an inpatient on 6* daily IV antibiotics (which would have been impossible to do at home) to treat a serious infection in the bone in my foot. On some of my better days I managed to cover nearly 10 miles on crutches or in a wheelchair. Being able to use a gym to work out would have been better and substantially safer all round.

On the flipside, it's amazing how many doors one can get through using nothing but a lollypop-stick from the ice-cream machine in reception or a pair of crutches to open gates from the other side. And technically the "no public access" signs don't apply because you're not public, you're an in-patient at that point... but there has to be better ways of staying fit and sane that would apply to the other 99.9% of patients.

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

#148

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

anonoholic wrote: post #111

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country are you in? The mention of HFCS suggests USA, but [USA based?] companies have pushed that in to a lot of foods in UK now it seems so ...?

Sorry, but "citation needed"? High fructose corn syrop is just not a thing outside of North America.

Not at all, but there is I understand some subsidy system that favours using corn syrup as a sweetener - and in mass production it can be added to almost any food to make it sweeter.

As USA founded/headquartered companies have taken over more of UK food production it \appears\ that this has been coincident with the increased usage of HFCS to sweeten traditional UK foods. That appearance is so strong that it is a stereotype in UK society "this tastes sickly sweet now, oh yeah, Kraft took over so they probably put corn-syrup in it".

It might just be that as USA capitalism has optimised squeezing more money out of lower quality food by adding cheaper ingredients other countries have optimised for financial profit in the same way?

I've never heard similar issues raised against the food industry of other countries; even so, perhaps it's an unwarranted stereotype?

I'm open if you want to try and change my view?

[Hmm, reading that back it's no longer clear to me what you are saying, I read your post as if the second sentence were a question; apologies if I erred.]