Healing Hospital: A Daring Paradigm

Category: Medicine

Introduction

The healing hospital paradigm is a concept that aims at changing the approach used in treating patients. The aim of this paradigm is to focus on the holistic well-being of the individual, not just his physical health. This implies that the care the patient receives in the hospital is not entirely based on the disease, but on the welfare of the patient. The hospital takes care of the emotional and spiritual welfare of a patient. The doctors and those attending the patient extend love and care to the patient. This arises from the realization that a patient is not always in pursuit of medical care to cater for the physical ailment, but there is always the need to cater for the emotional and spiritual aspects of the patient, which enables them to feel comfortable in the hospital, and this aids the patients in their recovery (Kaiser,1992). Healing hospitals ensure that they provide a risk free environment to speed the recovery of the patient. They do not aim at healing the patient through medication only, but also try to incorporate other important aspects that may hinder the recovery of the patient.

Components of a Healing Hospital

This paradigm lays more importance on the patients' healing environment. The patient's environment is inclusive of the kind of service the patient is getting, the food, the cleanliness of the hospital rooms, and the bedding. This implies that medical practitioners attending this patient attach equal importance to the environment, and the way they are attending to the patient and the kind of medical attention the patient is receiving (Maletz, 2011). This is contrary to conventional hospitals, which base their treatment on the medical attention only ensuring that they give the patient the best medicine without necessary care about the environment, which the patient is in (Kaiser, 1992). The healing hospital paradigm acknowledges that body is made up of physical, spiritual, and emotional parts. Therefore, the practitioners ensure that all these facets of the individual are taken care of for the patient to be okay. The paradigm does not prioritize one over the other. Therefore, offering a compassionate and loving care to the patient is the first component of healing hospital paradigm. Jesus advocated for love and compassion towards those in need, which is in line with this component of healing hospital paradigm.

A healing physical environment has numerous benefits to the patients in the recovery process. This forms the second component of the healing hospital paradigm. The human body reacts positively to a quiet and relaxing environment. Research has shown that this kind of environment is ideal for cell regeneration. This implies that hospitals should have the best environment for cell regeneration as a patient recuperates from a disease. Most public hospitals are noisy settings, and this has an effect in the recovery process of the patient due to the slow regeneration of the dead cells. A healing hospital provides a serene environment that enables a patient to relax and have a peaceful moment without noise and other disturbances that may annoy him/her (Maletz, 2011).

Integrated work design and technology forms the third component of healing hospital paradigm. Technology is meant to ease work and enhance efficiency in disposition of one's duties. Healing hospitals adopt technologies that allow the hospital attendant do their work in the most efficient way. The technologies adopted improve service delivery, cut cost, improve security within the hospital, and allow patients privacy. The work design adopted by healing hospitals also enables the practitioners deliver their work without much fuss. This improves service delivery ensuring that patients are well catered for in a manner that satisfies them (Sabatino, 1993).

Challenges

The concept of a healing hospital involves aspects that are sometimes challenging to provide. Establishing a compassionate loving approach to the patients requires that all the workers in a hospital are in a support of the healing hospital paradigm. Showing love to people that you do not know is not very easy for some people, which makes it hard for such people to fit in the healing hospital setting. Certain aspects of the medical practitioners' life compound this problem. Such aspects as low remuneration package make it hard for the workers to work around the hospital with a broad smile. This implies that a healing hospital may not have enough hospital attendants if its pay package is not very competitive. A low work force will lead to a shortage in the staff, which makes it hard for the few employees to work efficiently while at the same time showing compassion to their patients. Professionals are driven by monetary gains, which mean a hospital, or an institution that lacks the financial muscle to offer high remuneration packages to its employees has little or no chances of successfully offering the services of a healing hospital.

Technology is an important component of healing hospital. However, this poses a big challenge to hospitals due to huge financial outlays required for a hospital to acquire the necessary state of the art equipments that will enable the hospital offer the services it intends to offer at the highest efficiency possible. This again makes it hard for most hospitals to integrate the healing hospital paradigm in the system. Capital is a huge challenge that limits the extent to which institutions can effectively practice the healing hospital paradigm.

The law provides another steep challenge for the healing hospital paradigm. The concept of the health hospital is new in the industry, which implies that it is likely to attract more cases as people may be a bit skeptical about its effectiveness. People may have higher expectations from the system, which leads to lawsuits if the expectations of the patients are not satisfied. The paradigm appreciates the importance of all those involved in the provision of health care. This leads to the system treating every one as equal, which is contrary to systems in the other conventional hospitals. This implies that these workers have problems when registering in workers union, which recognizes people by their ranks.

The healing hospital strives to meet the needs of the patient that are beyond the physical body. Meeting spiritual and emotional needs of a patient is tough due to the diversity of the beliefs and emotional needs that people subscribe to. This leaves the practitioner attending a patient to come up with a system that will adequately address the needs of the patient the practitioner is dealing with at that time (Sabatino, 1993). This creates a problem because the methods applied are purely philosophical and diverse and their effectiveness cannot be ascertained. It also presents a problem to the hospital because it cannot have a standard way of solving spiritual and emotional needs of patients due to their diverse nature.

Conclusion

The holistic health of a patient is catered for in the healing hospital paradigm. The paradigm acknowledges the importance of spiritual and emotional health to the complete well-being of an individual. The three concepts of healing hospital, namely work design and technology, risk free environment and a caring culture, are aimed at giving a patient an ideal atmosphere to speed up the recovery process (Schuster, 1997). Providing these concepts is, however, faced by a number of challenges mostly emanating from the financial demands that are hinged on their implementation. The personnel require a high pay while the technology involved is expensive. The Bible advocates for a loving approach towards our neighbors and further defines our neighbors as people who are in need of our assistance. The neighbor to a health practitioner is the patient seeking medical attention and should be treated with the compassion and respect needed. The healing paradigm is the ideal health care approach due to the numerous benefits associated with it.

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