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• O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 0
A
bout seven years ago, we decided to trans-
form some of our staff and patient spaces
into "Zen dens" — areas that inspire calm
and mindfulness. One of our nurses, Darlene
Faust, RN, happened to have hidden artistic talent,
so she began freehand-painting murals onto the
walls of our pre-op bays during weekends. She
started with a staff cubicle and a breast biopsy
waiting room. The response to her murals was so
positive that we painted the rest of our pre-op bay
rooms — 12 in total.
Ms. Faust cleverly used a projector to display
pictures and phrases onto walls, pencil-sketched
the designs and painted over the lines later. She
purposefully included displays that would appeal to
everyone: meadows of flowers, a golf course, a
beach and even jungle animals for the kids.
Other nurses implemented an evidence-based
project to determine if the paintings had a calming
effect on patients. They asked patients about how
they felt and took their blood pressures, and
found the painted rooms decreased their anxi-
ety. The murals have also calmed and improved
the morale of staff and patients' families. There
isn't a week that goes by where we don't receive a
positive comment about the displays in patient
satisfaction surveys.
Susan Alexander, RN, MSN, CPAN, CSSM
The Reading Hospital SurgiCenter at Spring Ridge
Wyomissing, Pa.
susan.alexander@towerhealth.org
Ideas Work
P r a c t i c a l p e a r l s f r o m y o u r c o l l e a g u e s
That
ART THERAPY
Pre-op Bay Murals Put Patients at Ease
SOOTHING SCENES Artistic creativity can go a long way in calming patients and improving their moods as they wait in pre-op to be taken to the OR.
The
Reading
Hospital
SurgiCenter
at
Spring
Ridge