Can a view from the window help us heal?

What a group of trees outside a hospital window has to do with recovery.

In hospital, patients spend days in the same room. What they see from their bed is part of the environment in which they recover, whether it was designed that way or not.

The study

Roger Ulrich examined the records of patients who had gallbladder surgery in a hospital in Pennsylvania between 1972 and 1981. He compared 23 patients whose window looked out onto a small group of trees with 23 matched patients whose window faced a brick wall.

The findings

Patients with the view of trees left hospital sooner after surgery, received fewer negative comments in the nurses’ notes and needed fewer strong painkillers. The study compared existing records; patients were not randomly assigned to their rooms.

What this means for architecture

The study is one of the foundations of evidence-based healthcare design. It suggests that the orientation of a room, the position of its window and the view from the bed are not details, but part of the healing environment.

Conclusion

A window is more than a source of light. In the right place, it can become part of recovery.