Sunday, October 19, 2008

Comment on Regan's post

Regan Lee has a new post at WOE -- Healing Images. It just now popped up in my reader which was lucky because it gave me something to comment on -- doctor and hospital images.

I have been in way too many doctors offices that have that Norman Rockwell poster of a little boy getting his temperature taken. I am not a fan of Rockwell and I absolutely hate looking at that poster. The images they have in a doctor or dentist offices does matter. Here they mostly have very bland pastel southwestern type images. They are OK, in a boring way, but they are not anything that I think would inspire healing.

Years ago, I had a dentist, Dr. Romero, who has since passed away. I remember the first time I went to him, laid back in the chair and there on the ceiling was the cutest poster of a monkey hanging from a tree and it said "hang in there." Even though I was about to have a root canal that poster cheered me up. The root canal went great and I have heard many stories about how painful a root canal is, but that was not my experience. It didn't hurt during or after. Likely that wasn't only because of the poster on the ceiling, but I am sure that having that cute monkey face to look at during the procedure improved my mood and made things go better than they might have otherwise.

I don't think there is any doubt that visual surroundings and music have an effect on healing, pain and well being. Like Regan, I wish that more doctors would catch onto that fact.

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