Sister Mary Agatha Was Right
April 2nd, 2008Finally, proof: an ugly, depressing hospital atmosphere can actually interfere with the body’s healing process. Evidence-based design suggests that recovery comes more quickly in settings with plants, running water, or scenes of nature, than in sterile-seeming, closed-off, or cluttered spaces.
Cost-conscious healthcare managers need this kind of proof that it’s worthwhile to invest in providing pleasant surroundings. Will this fern improve recovery outcomes and reduce malpractice lawsuits?
The clinic praised in the design article for its cutting-edge new commitment to pleasant surroundings is at OHSU-Portland, a state school. Although U.S. medicine is overwhelmingly practiced now in corporate-owned conglomerates, there is still a noticeable difference between those that were founded as faith-based operations and those with secular histories. Profit margins and the business model may rule the day, but the institutional culture bears the marks of its origins. In many cases, hospitals with religious origins have never lost the intuitive understanding that it is “worth it” to provide an environment that is healing to the spirit as well as to the body.
Healthcare chaplaincy comes under similar scrutiny. Hospitals and nursing homes must provide some means of meeting the spiritual needs of patients. Too often, that means volunteer visits from local clergy. Is it really worth it for a hospital to keep a whole salaried Department of Pastoral Care? Individual chaplains may be able to say from experience that their work makes a difference, but can they prove it?
The Association of Professional Chaplains is beginning to collect and encourage outcome-based research demonstrating that, yes, patients who are visited by chaplains are released from the hospital sooner, are readmitted less frequently, are less likely to sue the hospital, and in general cost the institution fewer dollars. George Fitchett of Rush Presbyterian in Chicago is one such researcher.
As scientific research and corporate best practices move forward, they are beginning to rediscover truths that seemed superstitious or trivial to a late-20th-century mindset. Medicine is practiced most successfully, and most efficiently, when the patient can connect to sources of strength that transcend the individual and the everyday. Beauty, nature, prayer, all connect us to the infinite, and that connection uplifts and sustains and strengthens us, allowing us to benefit much more from medical treatment. The bottom line is– spiritual care is good medicine.