Healing Hospital and Spirituality

Healing Hospital & Spirituality: A New Philosophy to Caregiving

Traditionally, people have always turned to hospitals and clinics to seek relief from an illness or find a cure to a disease that afflicts the person. In these medical environments, people found solace on the fact that they will be cured or find the remedy for their ailment. However, as humanity progressed and developed, so did the illnesses and diseases that afflicted people through the years. To add to this problem is also the increasing demand for medical and healthcare services, and overworked medical and healthcare practitioners servicing all the people's medical needs. The hospital environment, then, becomes a place to seek treatment, and not healing. Every interaction with a doctor or hospital staff becomes a clinical case or simply, a transaction that must be met because it is the minimum requirement.

This is just one of the reasons why people have increasingly clamored for a "healing" environment in hospitals. Imagine a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, or probably bedridden in the hospital spending the last days of his or her life. The professional yet impersonal way that the hospital staff deals with the patient and his/her case does not help improve the patient's healing process. And how does a hospital create a healing environment for its patients? Authors Puchalski and McSkimming (2006) shared that a healing hospital environment is basically a place where there are people -- that is, hospital staff -- that is sensitive to the patient's condition and needs (30). This means not only knowing what medicines the patient should take, but also ensuring that the patient is comfortable in his/her bed, or perhaps the staff could engage the patient in a short conversation that will help the patient take his/her mind off his/her current physical (and emotional) condition). In a healing hospital environment, the staff are trained to be sensitive not only to the patients, but also to their families and mutual respect and regard for their caregivers. The training, according to the authors, should explain to the staff the importance of sensitivity to the patients' needs and their need for spirituality as they deal with their weak physical condition (32).

One of the hindrances in promoting and implementing a healing hospital environment is the reality that hospitals care to numerous patients, a number that far exceeds the staff and medical practitioners that it has. Thus, in as much as the staff would want to cater specifically to each patient's needs, at the very best, and given their time and manpower, all that is given to the patient is the basic requirement of constant checking up of his/her condition (Yong, 2011, 281). Unfortunately, this is a reality that many hospitals confront not only in the U.S., but also in other countries, wherein there is just too much patients waiting to be served by the often understaffed hospital.