If I Had My Way...

[poliphilo]

... I would design hospitals around quadrangles full of trees and grass and running water. The wards would be single storey with lots of windows- all of which would open- and there would be doors into the gardens- wide enough to wheel a bed through. Every bed would command a view of the world outside and every wall that wasn't glass would be brightly painted and/or display specially commissioned works of art. Ceilings would be reasonably high- and corridors- if we had to have them- as airy and well lit as the wards.It would be a guiding principle that no space should have to be lit by artificial light except on very dark days and at night...

Comments

[basefinder]

I love it!

[poliphilo]

I'd like to believe such places exist. They probably do. We had something like them in the old days; they were called "cottage hospitals".

[oakmouse]

OH HELLS YES. And gardens visible from the windows, too.

So many things about modern hospitals are more or less guaranteed to prolong sickness, prevent rest, and sap the patient's morale --- and it would be so easy to do it differently. We used to do it differently; we can again.

[poliphilo]

I was thinking about the former isolation ward I worked on as a young man. It was a bit run-down but it had some of the features I've listed. As you say, we used to manage these things better.

[oakmouse]

*nods* I worked as a cook for a couple of years at a nursing home that had been built in the 1950s. It had big windows, was surrounded on three sides by trees and on the fourth by a bank of azaleas, and (being U-shaped) had a garden with benches in the center which residents and their families could use in clement weather. Every resident could see trees and sky from their windows, and most could see flowers and flowering bushes as well. All the windows opened, and fresh air was the rule when it was warm enough outside. And the kitchen served real food --- we made homemade mashed potatoes, baked our own cakes and cookies from scratch, made real gravy instead of mixing up instant from a packet, etc. The residents loved it, and mpst of them did well.

[poliphilo]

That's very close to what I have in mind.