Literature review 5 - Healing the hospital environment

Healing the hospital environment
-Design, management and maintenance of healthcare premises

This book is a cyclopaedia of how to design, managen and maintain the hospitals. It is divided into ten chapters and each chapter could be divided into at least five parts. It describes the establishment from floor to services in detail and shows products and materials and some other thing very clear.

The general appearance, interior design and environmental quality of hospitals and healthcare buildings have an important influence on patients, staff and the public. But many hospitals and healthcare environments fail to create a positive impression. This book identifies why many NHS buildings do not look or feel welcoming and why even well-intentioned efforts to make improvements are unsuccessful.

The author show that significant improvements can be made within limited resources if hospitals recognize what can be achieved, set standards and invest in the relevant design expertise.

This practical and accessible book is written to inform those who are responsible for these important public buildings what can be achieved. It gives a wide range of examples of effective improvement in design, management and maintenance of all types of hospital and healthcare premise and their surrounding land. It is also intended to help design professionals adapt to the particular requirements of these buildings and their wide range of functions.

From this book I found a very interesting thing which I have not heard before - Snoezelen room.This is consists of a system of lights that are programmed to gently move and change throughout a room’s interior; it is intended to relax and calm those who are agitated, whether because of mental illness, learning disability or behavioral problems. This room is specially designed to deliver stimuli to various senses, using lighting effects, color, sounds, music, scents, etc. Ideally, Snoezelen is a non-directive therapy and can be staged to provide a multi-sensory experience or single sensory focus, simply by adapting the lighting, atmosphere, sounds, and textures to the specific needs of the client at the time of use. There is no formal focus on therapeutic outcome - the focus is to assist users in gaining the maximum pleasure from the activity in which they and the enabler are involved. An advantage of Snoezelen is that it does not rely on verbal communication and may be beneficial for people with profound autism, as it may provide stimulation for those who would otherwise be almost impossible to reach.