Grass can sing but concrete mainly swears

 

Here we are, the concrete, brick and steel jumble that’s the latest iteration of our district hospital; twelve floors high in places. Now here’s the little forest of architects’ and builders’ self-trumpeting advertising hoardings as you approach. Here too the tarmac and metal railings that protect the consultants-only parking areas, and the slightly-more-distant parking lots for us civilians.

On foot, we approach the multicoloured mishmash of hospital noticeboards – from nice straightforward signposts, to all sorts of slightly mysterious signs and notices.  Where to go? What does that mean? Am I late yet? Then, whoof! we’re actually inside one of the brutalist hospital blocks.  There’s another brief period of mild panic and confusion as the eye and mind try to make sense of too much or too little information (sometimes both at the same time).  We immediately begin to experience the low-to-middle range anxiety that often hits you in most big hospital sites, or large airports.

So here’s me in my all-too-vulnerable body, being drawn into this complex medical machine. It’s frightening, of course it is. The visual clamour is often pretty overwhelming. You’re very much made to feel you’re a visitor: ‘We accept you but on our terms’, every building, corridor and ward seem to say.

I already feel a need to make sure I know how to retrace my steps, be able to get out on my own terms if necessary.  I feel an increasingly urgent desire to breathe non-medicated air.  I want to see some bushes, a tree, a dog even!  And at this point I really wonder whether the medics and managers have any idea of how this concrete expression of their endeavours comes across to us patients.

What strikes me is that everything on this vast hospital site seems to be both brutalist in style and utilitarian in purpose.  An architect’s dream or nightmare if you will.  Here, it’s likely to be tough to be a patient, I think to myself.  I find I have already started to list the things that I value most about not being in hospital…

A patient but also a person

“People don’t have to head for the woods to enjoy nature’s restorative effects. Even a glimpse of nature from a window helps.”

– Rachel Kaplan, Dept of Psychology, University of Michigan

My immediate thought is that I must be able to keep my personhood as intact as possible.  Then, oh my heart already aches about this, I want and need to have some way to see, feel, and smell something of the natural world.  You see, many of my best, deepest, and most utterly authentic experiences have had something to do with contacts with ‘the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees’.

Yes, I felt so utterly at home when walking across the Pennine Way for example, where the very rocks themselves called out to me in welcome and recognition.  Yes, I rejoiced completely when all around me the skylarks seemed to make the very sky sing.  And again yes, I could breathe so fully and easily when striding out along the lovely Northumberland coast.

I also retain the truly awesome sense of wonder that I first came across when studying for my Zoology Degree about the very extraordinary nature of the natural world.  The weirdest of Sci-Fi inventions have nothing on the amazing worlds of hymenoptera or of the teeming universe of nematodes for instance.

I seem to have come a long way from the concrete brutalism of our hospital visit – but not really.  What I want and need from a place of medicine and healing is some sort of recognition that we’re all rooted, to some extent, in the natural world. I also know that I’m by no means the first to see a vital connection between being in sight of greenery and how well we recover.

Biophilia and health

“Nature isn’t a miracle cure for diseases’ says McRobert,’But by interacting with it, spending time in it, experiencing it and appreciating it we can reap the benefits of feeling happier and healthier as a result’. Lucy McRobert, nature matters campaigns manager for The Wildlife Trusts, in BBC online report.

In more everyday terms I’ve found that once incarcerated in a modern medical facility, I very quickly start to feel that I need the sight of the natural world.  But I’m instantly calmed if I’m able to look through a window and see trees for example.  On the other hand I’m not really myself if I’m unable to connect to something of the natural world every few hours.  I think this ‘biophilic’ phenomenon may be increasing as I get older.

Without this natural `green’ anchor, I think that I am even more likely to feel the pain and stress of being ill and the effects of medical tests and treatment.

More generally, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that there are beneficial effects in clinical terms of adopting certain ‘green’ measures in health and care environments.

For example, in 2016, the World Health Organisation produced a report summarising available evidence on the effects of urban green spaces.  Benefits include improved mental health, reduced cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, reduced risk of obesity and of Type2 diabetes, and improved pregnancy outcomes.  The mechanisms leading to health benefits include psychological relaxation and stress alleviation, increased physical relaxation, reduced exposure to air pollutants, to noise and to excess heat.

Like our local district hospital, many hospitals are located in urban areas, where average temperatures are higher than in surrounding areas (the ‘heat-island’ effect). But heat stress caused by excessively high temperatures adversely affects health (particularly among older people, those who are chronically ill and pregnant women) and can increase mortality rates.  Yet I haven’t yet seen any consideration of this important health factor in the proposed development plans for the local hospital!

Along the way, here’s another persuasive example of a study showing the importance of ‘greenery’:

– A study conducted by Roger Ulrich, of the Center for Healthcare Building Research at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, found that patients with a view of trees tend to recover faster after surgery, require less pain medication and have fewer post-operative complications than those with a view of a brick wall (quoted in Huffpost article).

There is more than enough robust study evidence for us to demand of budget-holders, planners and constructors that – in the interests of patients – any and all measures should be employed to help ensure that hospital environments and environs incorporate ‘green’ measures to their fullest extent.  Politicians and bureaucrats may of course shout ‘extra cost!’ but they have to be challenged.  What’s the real cost of illness and delayed recovery caused by having to try to get well in a world of concrete, steel, and plastics?

And above all, I think, medics of all stripes should be clamouring for a truly ‘green’ approach to patient care.  Ultimately they are the people charged with helping us to get well.

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” – Rachel Carson