Healthcare Design - October 2016 - 23

EDUCATIONAL - ADVER TISEMENT

GARDENS

THE ROLE
O F FA B R I C
FOR SHADE
A N D S E AT I N G

Healing gardens are best designed to improve mental, physical and social
well-being when they facilitate a sense of control and access to privacy,
encourage social support and exercise and give users a means to spend
time in nature. Performance fabric shade structures and seating offer many
options in how gardens are used and the level of privacy they provide.
Group interaction, private conversation or quiet observation can all be
accommodated in comfort when appropriate fabric shade structures and
seating are selected.

N AT U R E I S H E A L I N G

The idea of nature as restorative is a concept that spans cultures and is
more than a thousand years old. Contact with nature has long been seen
as beneficial for health and well-being. The World Health Organization
formalized a definition of health more than 65 years ago in the Preamble
to its Constitution as, "a complete state of physical, mental and social
well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Defining health with this broad definition encompasses the understanding
that there are many dimensions of wellness-and wellness is compromised
when one or more dimensions is out of balance. The human connection with
nature is a bond that can foster healing to restore the balance; early medical
practitioners understood this.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, monastery infirmaries included gardens,
often elaborate, to distract the ill. In the 1800s in both Europe and America,
pavilion-style hospitals were commonly designed with gardens for the
patients to use.
Florence Nightingale, nurse and public health reformer, wrote in 1898 that
patients should be able to see out of windows from their beds, "to see sky
and sunlight at least, if you can show them nothing else...I assert [this] to
be, if not of the very first importance for recovery, at least something very
near it." (Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not) Those involved
in caring for the sick intuitively understood that views and access to nature
were therapeutic, even though they did not understand why.

2 0 T H C E N T U R Y T H EO R Y & D E S I G N

The 20th century leaps in medical knowledge and technology sidelined a
connection with nature. The need to accommodate modern technologies
in healthcare facilities, to improve efficiency and to prevent infection,
overshadowed the importance of therapeutic elements such as gardens.
The result was starkly institutional hospitals that looked like office buildings,
exteriors dominated by parking lots, and interiors closed off with air
conditioning. This design, combined with an environment in which patients
have little choice or control, led to a setting that did nothing to calm
patients, reduce stress or meet the emotional needs of not only patients,
but also families and staff.

PAT I E N T- C E N T E R E D D E S I G N

The patient-centered care movement of the early 1990s began a renewed
awareness of the negative effects of institutional settings. Economic factors
pushed this movement forward as competition between healthcare providers
grew, and patients had more choices among hospitals and assisted living
facilities. Healthcare organizations are now moving toward a holistic approach
to treating the patient, taking the needs of family members and staff into
consideration as well. The growing body of research on the benefits of nature
to mental, physical and social well-being has meant that many healthcare
facilities are returning to the concept of healing gardens, this time with
scientific evidence and understanding of how and why they are therapeutic.

Rediscovery of Nature explores the beauty of shadows on fabric to provide patients
with a shaded space to reflect and heal.

HE ALING GARDEN RESE ARCH

Mounting evidence shows that gardens are one way to measurably reduce
stress for patients in healthcare settings and can benefit family members and
healthcare staff.
In a 1984 study in Science, environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich was the
first to use modern medical research standards (strict experimental controls,
quantified health outcomes) to demonstrate that recovery times shortened
with a view of nature. Gallbladder surgery patients with a view of trees
healed on average a day faster, needed significantly less pain medication,
and had fewer postsurgical complications than those with a view of a wall.
Even pictures of landscapes can soothe. Another study by Ulrich at Uppsala
University Hospital in Sweden provided heart surgery patients with either
a simulated window view showing a photo of a stream or a forest; abstract
paintings; a white panel; or a blank wall. Patients who viewed the trees or
stream photo needed fewer doses of pain medicine and were significantly
less anxious during the post-operative period than the other patients.
Since these studies, many more have shown that exposure to healing
gardens reduces patient levels of pain and stress. This may in turn boost
the immune system and allow the body and other treatments to help.
A well-designed healing garden can help to restore the balance of physical,
mental and social well-being, and in this sense it can facilitate healing in
anyone who uses it, not just patients.

LE ARN MORE ABOUT THE ROLE OF FABRIC
FOR SHA DE AN D SE ATING IN HE ALING
GARDENS BY COMPLETING THIS CONTINUING
EDUC ATION COURSE AND PASSING THE FREE
TES T AT SUNBRELL A .COM/HE ALING
http://www.SUNBRELLA.COM/HEALING
Healthcare Design - October 2016

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