Medical Facilities - Positive or negative environment?

Throughout the duration of the course we have read several articles on a various number of topics surrounding space, place and scale. The most recent article that I read was the one that spoke of geriatric centres and the role they play in the lives of their inhabitants. This was one of the more interesting articles we read in class, and really interested me and provoked much thought. It seems that many people feel that a hospital is simply a place where the sick and dying go to live out their last days of their lives. Obviously there are other patients that are living in the hospital that aren't suffering from life threatening illnesses, however for the one's that are, how are the last days, weeks or months going to be spent? While it is true that a geriatric facility's main purpose is to help heal or cure people, there are a large number of people who are forced to spend large amounts of time within the walls of the hospital. To these people, the hospital is their home. Their hospital has become their new found "place". But how welcome are these people feeling? They spend their days sitting in their rooms with little to do. They receive treatment on a regular basis, have limited visitation hours, and are forced to spend a lot of their time by themselves in their rooms. They are not allowed to roam the hospital freely and even if they were, where would they want to be going? Most hospitals provide few activities for its clients to take part in. Sure, they can go outside or go and sit in the lobby but that's where it pretty much ends. They are essentially "trapped" in their rooms. The majority of people are already hesitant when having to go to a hospital, and the fact that once you sit and analyze the place you are in, it's not surprising that people grow to further fear spending any sort of extended time in a hospital.

Along with the article that we read in class, a found a second article on the internet that discusses the role that the atmosphere of a hospital plays (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8211286&dopt=Citation). Both the website and the article that we read in class focus on upgrading the aesthetic value that hospitals have. As we have also learned throughout the duration of this course is that the experience that one has within a place has a profound effect on their overall feeling of that place. If you are somehwere where you feel trapped, alone and disconnected, it is inevitable that you will dislike the time you are spending in that place. In a place such as a hospital where the goal is to make patients as comfortable and welcome as possible, it seems that not many hospitals are doing so. In the article we read in class, the author talks of Baycrest Geriatric Centre that is in fact, one of those hospitals that has spent the extra time and money on providing it's patients with a more colourful, happy environment. By spending the extra money on things such as paintings and aquariums and constructing music and arts and crafts rooms allow the patients to feel as if they are still able to do things normally and aren't secluded to their rooms where they are forced to stay alone and ignored.

While I agree that a hospital's main focus is to have the proper medical machinery and technology to assist as many patients as possible, the overall look and feel of the hospital must be taken into consideration. If we can somehow provide patients with an environment that permits them to function freely and normally, perhaps their moods as well as possibly their health would increase. While it is not proven that the aesthetic factors in hospitals increase the health status of patients, the least we can do is make small adjustments to our geriatric centres that provide patients with a sense of security, growth and most importantly, freedom.

Lucas - 206786040