If you must stay in a hospital, book a room with a view.
Roger Ulrich, an associate professor at the University of Delaware, say he has determined that certain surgery patients recover faster if they are in rooms overlooking a natural landscape.
Ulrich, a geographer with an interest in environmental psychology, conducted a nine-year study whose results appeared last year in the journal Science. Since then, he has heard from hospital administrators nationwide who applied his conclusions when designing new facilities.
”The study involved two groups,” Ulrich said. All the patients had undergone gall bladder surgery–a major operation. All were on the same ward in a southeast Pennsylvania hospital and all were served by the same staff.
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The only variable was the view.
”One group looked out into a field of leafy, deciduous trees,” Ulrich said. ”The other group looked out at a featureless brown brick wall. The tree view people spent significantly less time in the hospital (and) tended to develop fewer complications.”
The average stay was shortened to about eight days from nine.
In addition, he said, ”the wall group” was given many more doses of potent narcotic.
His observations were reinforced by nursing notes, which cited ”far, far fewer negative comments” about their patients with a natural view. Notations such as: ”Patient is in good spirits; patient is cheerful,” described those who saw trees.
Some of the wall viewers` charts read: ”patient upset” or ”patient crying.”
”We do have to take into account window views,” said Ulrich. ”They do have an effect on patient well-being. Unfortunately, we have designed many hospitals in the past where the quality of architecture was very high . . . but virtually all window views were bad.”