Patient Rights Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Consumerism, environmentalism, and a growing patient's right movement combined in the late 1970s to influence the design, spatial organization and management of US hospitals. A shift in services to ambulatory facilities, hard financial times, and an increased competition for patients threatened to downsize or close individual institutions. To survive, new marketing strategies were required. Insights into the depersonalizing influence of hospitals on patients and their potential for responding to human needs for security and comfort suggested the creation of truly "therapeutic environments."
Contemporary hospital architecture had already realized the need for flexible space, adaptable to the shifting demands of medical technology and staffing. Indeed, many newly build hospitals returned to previous extended horizontal designs to improve circulation and communication. Inside, the hospital space was divided into "zones" and provided with a central atrium--often the lobby--to enhance lighting and orientation. Poorly illuminated or windowless hospital settings, especially intensive care and emergency room facilities, contributed to the patients' problem of sensory deprivation.
In 1984, a groundbreaking study by Roger Ulrich documented the health benefits that accrued when patients were placed within the sight of natural landscapes. A resurgence of the importance of gardens as sources of reflection and restoration followed. For their part, patient's rooms took notice of the need for privacy by increasing the number of private and semiprivate rooms. In sharp contrast with the usual barren and sterile "cells," floral sheets and bedspreads, curtains and colored walls, closets, desks and lamps --even art objects—as well as televisions and video recorders reproduced some of the trappings of home. "Humanness is denied when choice and setting deprivation are the rule," declared one author. Home-like surroundings were said to lessen the stress of care and speed recovery. Patient rights suggested that the sufferers become partners in their care. Reduced costs, improved patient satisfaction and better outcomes were expected. This paper will end by focusing on Planetree, a non-profit organization originally from California encouraging patient and family involvement during hospitalization. Installed in numerous institutions across the US, their Model Hospital Unit sought to create such a homelike environment through physical changes and staff reorganization.