DECORATING A HOPEFUL WORKPLACE

Several years ago the Grey Nuns Family Medicine Clinic staff began a study of hope. All the staff took part. Doctors, nurses and administrators studied together. As an act of hope, they decided to decorate the clinic with the goal of making it a hopeful place. They turned the waiting room into a living room with a comfortable conversational atmosphere. They created a children’s play area. They transformed the examining rooms into theme rooms featuring photos and stories for patients to enjoy while they waited for the doctor to come in. The Roman Room, for example, featured one doctor’s story about going to Rome, showing pictures and explaining why Rome was a hopeful place for him.

The project received national media coverage at the time. It was also greeted with cynicism. Why were much-needed health care dollars being wasted on decoration? What difference could decorations really make? What reason was there to believe that patients would want to have conversation with each other, or that the doctors would want to be distracted by conversations about Rome in the examining room?

I met with the clinic staff yesterday. Most of them were strangers to me. Only a few of the original hope decorators remained. I asked them to tell me what had happened to their hope project. This is what they told me.

They are now in the process of redecorating. The rooms are being updated with the stories and photos supplied by the present staff. They are pleased that they can now talk to their patients about their own stories. The patients sit out in the living room talking to each other about the examining rooms.

I hope I get the Prairie Room,”” says one. Mom, do you think we can get the Spa Room?””

When the doctor comes in, the patients start talking about the room they waited in. They remark on the atmosphere. They ask about the origin of the project.

All this leads me to reflect on the medical clinic I visit. It is a big clinic with several doctors. The phone rings constantly. The staff hustle patients down the hall to airless identical cubicles. Chairs in the busy waiting area are arranged in rows. Never once have I heard a patient express a hope to another. Nor have I heard the excited voice of a child who is looking forward to being in an examining room. Having heard this kind of talk among the patients, it is not at all surprising that the Grey Nuns Clinic staff wanted to update their decorating! New staff who were not included in the original project could see how the decorating had influenced the relationships between and among staff and patients.

Hope involves the interaction of thinking, feeling, acting and relating. When you come together to decorate using a hope theme, your product reflects all of these. It transcends social class and personal income. Where is hope more needed than in a medical clinic. The line-ups are long, the staff is tired, the patients are ill and the prognosis can be poor. Hope can get lost in the shuffle.

It is hard to ignore hope when you put it in the decorations. It stays visible, works its way into routine conversations among strangers. . What’s more, hope has a much better chance of showing itself when people come together in places where it is okay to look forward to things, and okay to find that the patient has something in common with the doctor.