Last week my partners and I met with a health care system executive charged with designing a brand new hospital to be built over the next two years, right here in suburban St. Louis. Mirabile dictu, the new place will include a new cancer center. For those not familiar with the art and science of medical oncology, to find out that your hospital is being replaced with shining new multi-million dollar building is like being promoted from running a hot dog stand to the kitchens of Alain Ducasse.
As we looked over the plans I was struck with a sudden epiphany that tore me away from the banausic descriptions of office placement and patient flow. Gazing at the pristine drawings I remembered how difficult it is to direct the care of people living with cancer, whether working as a professional, a spouse, a relative or just a friend. It is not just hard work - it is frightening work, and studying the organization of the new cancer center sparked a particular thought. I raised up and asked the group the following question:
"Do you know what is the biggest fear of oncologists?"
The room jolted to a stop just long enough to fixate on the next words out of my mouth.
"The biggest fear we have," I said, "is the fear of working alone. Without our nurses, secretaries and partners, without radiation oncologists, social workers, surgeons, radiologists and many other teammates we could never give our patients anything close to acceptable care, let alone what they deserve to receive. This center is designed exactly the way we wish it could be."
A well-planned cancer center is certainly a compliment to the designers, but to us it is a relief - a reprieve from the angst we experience daily, sometimes as early as when the morning songs begin.
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I did my clinical rotation in St Louis (at Barnes) and I've been looking for an excuse to move back ever since. A new cancer center there would be just the ticket. Sweet!
Does St. Louis really need a new cancer center? Maybe we do - I'm no expert - but it does seem like there are a lot already - MO Baptist is building one and didn't the hospital just north of MB just build one recently too?
Seems like a log of the SB bloggers are from St. Louis too - is that just my imagination?
How wonderful! I am very happy that you will be working in a facility that will be able to provide the kind of care that you want to give your patients. Being a woman living with cancer (Chondrosarcoma), I know what it's like to be a recipient of care at a top notch cancer center. I remember when my mother went through radiation at a facility that provided her with great care but had less than attractive accomodations. I had expected the same when it was my turn. Fortunately, I received care at a different hospital where there were murals on the walls to look at and a built-in, several-station muzak player so that each patient could choose what sort of music they'd like to hear. Even though the radiation process wore me down, being able to have it done in a place where I felt more like a spa guest than a "patient" made it all a lot less scarey than it could have been. Having all that coupled with friendly, cheerful and encouraging staff helped me work my way into the sort of attitude I needed to get in order to fight (and hopefully one day beat) this nasty tumor of mine.
I have a cancer blog and I'd really like to create a link to your page, if you don't mind. Either way, I just want to say thank you for all of the work that you do everyday to keep people like me around to enjoy the lives that so many healthy people take for granted. Good luck with your new facility!
Your comments were particularly interesting to me. My late husband, who died in November, was trained as an artist and a designer, and was a wizard at creating rooms that served people.
During the last nine years of his life, we spend many hours in hospitals, oncologists' offices, surgeons' offices -- you get the drift -- as he fought recurring varieties of cancer as well as Parkinson's Disease.
Almost universally, these rooms were not only NOT designed for the comfort, emotional nor physical, of the patients, but seemed calculated further to harass those who were already very ill. Many of the caregivers were kind; some were careless. But even after repeated constructive comments (such as how much a handrail could help those struggling to walk through long corridors), nothing was ever done. The medical oncologists' office had no way for wheelchair-using patients even to navigate!
In some cases, it was clear that one designer had the business of many physicians in our small community; there is one set of prints with palm trees and other Egyptian designs that immediately sends my blood pressure up when I see them. The radiation oncologists' offices, the oral surgeon's offices, and the hospital all had them on proud display, with the same fabrics, the same furniture, and all in the same colors!
If matters other than banausic (and thank you for the gift of the new word!) were given greater consideration -- perhaps even the emotional and psychological effect spaces have on patients! -- the treatments might go better for both docs and patients.
The saddest thing, to me, about my father's death (aged over 80) was that he spent the last days of his life in a room where there was nothing to look at.
A nice garden would have been much better for him than much of the well-meant overtreatment that he had in the last weeks of his life.
do you want to pay for a nicer looking hospital or better treatments/advances/techniques/research/equipent?
Response to Hussein
The walls will still need to be painted, perhaps in a soothing instead of jarring color. There will still need to be chairs in the waiting room, perhaps they could be arranged for better navigation of wheelchairs. The ceiling tiles above the exam table could be painted by the local elementary school art classes to distract the nervous patient. An environment that is soothing and calms the frazzled nerves of the already discomforted patient is better than a handful of pills. But on the other hand, I agree that I would rather sit on the floor of a concrete box if it meant they had the money to find a cure :)