Healing Hospital

By: Laurie Eberst When a new hospital is being planned and built, much of the focus is often placed on how many beds it will house, where each department will be located, how many it will employ and the bottom-line cost of the project. This is not necessarily the case for Catholic Healthcare West’s (CHW) Mercy Gilbert Medical Center in Arizona, which opened its doors in June, 2006. While these considerations were important to the company’s plans for the hospital, I and the leadership team worked hard to ensure that the facility was built to reflect, in every way possible, a healing environment. One that helps patients feel safe and comfortable, one that reminds staff why they chose healthcare as a line of work. At Mercy Gilbert Medical Center we pride ourselves on being a Healing Hospital™; not only as a healing facility, but also as a healing culture. A Healing Hospital™ (a designation awarded by the Baptist Healing Trust, Nashville, Tenn.) goes beyond the glass, bricks and mortar. The Mercy Gilbert Medical Center Healing Hospital™ culture is what sets it apart. The Healing Hospital™ concept includes three key components: 1. A healing physical environment 2. The integration of work design and technology 3. A culture of Radical Loving Care A Healing Physical Environment Mercy Gilbert conjoined aesthetics with improved performance. We took into consideration not only how we would care for patients, but also how employees, as caregivers, would engage with families. We have learned that providing a loving, compassionate aesthetically pleasing environment promotes healing. True healing environments are constructed in ways that help patients and families cope with the stresses of illness.

I have worked in healthcare for many years, most of them as an RN. But it was during a very personal experience that I came to value a healing environment. While