5 Strategies to Increase Hospital Patients’ Comfort
There are a lot more places that people would rather be on any day than in a hospital. Except for employees, most people are at hospitals because they are ill or visiting someone who is sick. That alone can result in feelings of hopelessness there isn’t much the average person can do. Hospitals are scary; the care seems cold and non-personalized, and communication is normally terrible. Discover how hospitals can use strategies to make patients feel more comfortable despite them being hospitalized to recover from illness or surgeries.
Despite so many people being fearful of them, hospitals do a lot of good work in the communities they serve. Through education and preventative opportunities, many live daily lives without the need for prolonged stays in hospitals. However, for those who have illnesses that force them to go to hospitals, strategies that they can use to make patients more comfortable are:
1. Professionally touch patients
Although touch can be misperceived, it is one of the best ways to build trust, compassion, care, and comfort between patients and doctors. Touch is vital in the treatment and done correctly, a skillful doctor can make their patient feel comfortable enough to welcome it. Touch also leaves patients feeling more human. Before their procedure is the best time to touch patients when they can see the doctor in clothes instead of scrubs and the surgical LED headlight intact. Touch also:
- Offers the patient a sense of encouragement.
- Builds a more personal relationship between the doctor and the patient.
- Leaves the patient feeling reassured.
- Gives the patient a sense of genuine support and care.
2. Increase inpatient activity
Many patients in hospitals are not bedridden, incapacitated, or disabled. Many are there overnight for observation or tests. Instead of being confined to bed during that time, having an activity room and designing activities based on age groups will give patients something to do besides lying in bed. Some activities can include cards, puzzles, or charades. They can also include music, dancing, and arts and craft activities. Being busy helps keep patients’ minds off of their tests and helps make time go faster.
3. Minimize bureaucracy
The stress of dealing with hospitalizations need not get compounded by bureaucracy. There are multiple ways to avoid endless stacks of paper when you are in the middle of being admitted into the hospital. Some things that hospitals can do to make patients more comfortable and avoid the unnecessary bureaucracy when checking in are:
- Make sure paperwork is complete in advance.
- Give patients a pre-op checklist.
- Has the patient’s ID bracelet been printed in advance?
4. Provide access for overnight guests
One of the scariest things about staying in a hospital is being away from your loved ones. Although hospitals are not equipped to facilitate entire families, having a husband or wife to sleep next to their spouse comfortably is essential to making patients feel more at ease. When they can’t be with their spouse, many cannot rest and go into surgery or test sleep deprivation. In addition, to support, a spouse is there to assure their spouse, get information about the procedure from the doctors and nurses, and ask questions that the patient may not have thought to ask.
5. Make the hospital room homier
Last but certainly not least, hospitals can make patients feel more comfortable by making everything about the patient’s stay and care feel more like home. Although a hospital is a rigorous and professional atmosphere, a hospital room with a window with curtains, a spare bed for a spouse with a blanket, a side table, and television are the beginnings of making a patient feel more at home. In addition, hospitals can also:
- Dim the lights.
- Adjust the temperature to the patient’s liking.
- Add essential oils to a diffuser.
- Allow patients to bring a picture from home.
- Allow patients to wear gowns from home.
- Have music playing.
- Offer more food options.
Although most times patients are in the hospital to recover, there are strategies that hospitals can use to make patients feel more comfortable. Five of the top strategies are above, and if incorporated by the hospital, patients will feel a lot less anxiety about having to stay.