Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

Year of the Nurse - November 2020 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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8 • 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

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