TV becomes healing tool at Community Regional
Hospital room televisions have long been used to distract patients from their discomforts and fears. But sometimes the channel offerings do more to increase anxiety than to assuage it, says longtime Community Regional Medical Center chaplain Grimaldo Enriquez.
“So many times I have gone in to an ICU or another room and seen shoot-‘em-up scenes on the TV with gunshot sounds and the police sirens and screeching tires and screaming women. We’re counteracting our medical interventions with that,” says Enriquez, who spearheaded an effort to install a serenity channel on televisions in the downtown Fresno hospital.
Now Community Regional patients can choose peaceful nature scenes accompanied by relaxing music on their hospital room TVs.
“They say the color of a room calms you and soothing music calms you and this is sort of a combo,” explains Nancy Cardwood, Community Regional’s manager of service excellence integration. “It helps reduce anxiety which also promotes healing.”
Cardwood says the chaplain was part of discussions on how to create a more calm and healing environment by reducing hospital noise, turning down beeps on medical monitoring equipment, quickly fixing squeaky gurney wheels, lowering voices and reminding visitors with posters that read, “Shhh....Silent Hospitals Help Healing.”
Enriquez took the idea further. He found videos used in other health settings to induce a more restful state. Then he worked with technology and facilities managers to get them installed as an offering on hospital room televisions, Cardwood says.
“There’s more to fixing noise than just getting rid of bad sounds,” Enriquez says. “Some sounds can be quite healing. We were looking to stimulate the relaxation response that’s sometimes elicited by meditation or prayer or, for some people, by just quiet. It does drop the adrenaline and the cortisol that can be damaging in the body.”
The serene scenes and calming music also work to soothe families who are worried or may be dealing with the impending death of a loved one, Enriquez says. The serenity channel is also available on the hospital waiting room TVs.
This story was reported by Erin Kennedy. She can be reached at ekennedy@communitymedical.org.