Hospitals can sometimes be scary places for everyone so having a more welcoming hospital lights can be enough to make a patient welcome and trust that everything will be ‘ok’.
Lighting as simple as a violet colour in operational rooms and waiting rooms can be enough to reassure a patient. Violet has been proven to show emotional effects such as trust, trust that comforts any worry a patient may have.
Equipment that looks more modern can give a patient a feeling of well-being as we usually trust science and things that look newer as we think they are less likely to make mistakes.
Insufficient lighting in a hospital can make patients more fatigued, grumpy and stressed. If lighting is too dim the same effect are present.
Other factors that can effect a patients well-being is the architecture of the building, other patients TV’s and monitors. If walls are between patients beds it can cancel out sound but also the light which can be a huge disturbance when sleeping.
If different areas for different patients are private, patients can turn on their personal area lights on and off as they please so whenever the patient is tired they can sleep whenever they like without the disturbance of other lights flooding into their area.
Patients with rooms to themselves can still have problems with the lighting in the hospital as light from the corridor leaks into the room when doors are left slightly open, doors have to be left open so nurses can check on patients throughout the night.
To solve this problem, lights outside in the hallway can be directed so that they light the hallway but don’t shine into the patients rooms. These lights can also be dimmed so that it is still safe to walk down the corridor without falling over, and so it does not affect the patients sleep.
In hospitals with older lighting patients have been reported to only be averaging 4 hours of sleep every night. With new, modern lighting patients can get a good night sleep so they can have a happier stay in hospital rather than an experience patients would want to forget.
Some huge effects of having white washed lighting is depression and patients being unfriendly towards staff. Depressed patients can give them feelings of being unwanted which is not a feeling patients want to be having in hospital as they want to be having feelings of being welcome into a hospital.
Also patients that are unfriendly towards staff can affect how the staff feel, not enjoying their job and simply not caring about their job anymore and not giving the attention to detail that the hospital required from its staff.
It’s not just the colour of the lights that matters, it’s the amount of sunlight coming in through the windows to patients and also visitors. More windows in a hospital allowing lots of sunlight to come to is great as natural light has emotion effects to make patients more happy and want to communicate with other patients.
Patients talking to each other can be a great way to be social in a place sometimes to be deprived of the outside world. Happy patients also spread their happiness to staff and other patients like a disease (ironically). And there is nothing better than patients remembering their experience in hospital for all the right reasons.Natural light can also affect your staff in a good way making them more accurate, friendly and efficient. Accurate staff are less likely to make mistakes, mistakes in a hospital can be a deathly mistake putting all patients at risk so making that less likely though lighting can be a great peace of mind.
Friendly staff make patients more welcome and have a great experience in hospital. Efficient staff is great as staff can work a lot quicker, getting more done in the same amount of time. And as emergency’s are a regular part of anyone’s day in hospital, the faster the staff work the higher the chance of survival of a patient in need of medical attention.
Windows in waiting areas for visitors can affect the visitor’s mood too with traits such as friendliness and trust. And the first thing a patient would like when being visited is a friendly visitor reassuring them that everything is going to be fine.
If visitors are trusting what a doctor is letting them know, they can pass this information to a patient where a patient may be more trusting towards a family or friend rather than a doctor.
