IF YOU are ever a patient in hospital, be sure to get a quiet room with a view of nature out the window – it could speed you towards recovery.
The physical healthcare environment can affect patient outcome for better or worse, according to Dr Esther Sternberg, an expert on stress and the brain, who gave a talk at St James’s Hospital in Dublin at the weekend on the design and role of “healing spaces”.
The field was kick-started by a US study published in 1984 that tracked 46 patients following gall bladder surgery who stayed in rooms looking onto either a brick wall or a stand of trees.
"The patients with views of trees out the window left hospital sooner and needed less pain medication. So is there something about window views of nature that can help you heal?" Dr Sternberg asked a conference hosted by the Institute of Molecular Medicine, where she read excerpts from her book, Healing Spaces: the Science of Place and Well Being.
One theory suggests that the region of the brain where we process such views is rich in pain-dulling opiate receptors, so when we look at a scene we can derive pleasure from it, she explained.
Light can also have an impact, and studies in Canada and Italy have shown that patients hospitalised with depressive disorders did better when they were on the sunny side of the hall, said Dr Sternberg, who heads the section on neuroendocrine immunology and behaviour at the US National Institute of Mental Health.
Colour, too, can influence mood – we associate greens and blues with calm.
“The majority of the colour receptors are tuned to the colour green,” she said. “Smaller numbers are tuned to reds and yellows.”
Meanwhile, continuous noise can be stressful for patients, she added.
“The sound in ICU can range from 45 to 98 decibels – 98 is like a motorbike firing within close range. Machines, phones, people walking, visitors, other patients moaning – none of this is comforting, and we need to think about how patients are feeling.
"I think so many of us assume that hospitals are stressful places, and that they should be stressful. But if a patient is in hospital and feels stressed by the physical set-up and environment, then they should talk to the healthcare professional about it," she told The Irish Timesafter her talk. "And one quick easy fix is to reduce noise, so be aware."
