Create with Joy
The entryway of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital stretches open into a beautiful waiting area with arching windows. Streams of sunlight illuminate Superman, The Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and other life-sized figurines interspersed throughout the waiting area. For this project, I found myself on a tour with one of the Mott activity coordinators, whom, for privacy's sake, I'll refer to as Meg. She gave me a tour of the hospital and provided invaluable insight into how it runs. She talked about her job and the creative and practical ways in which she supports the hospital. It's beautiful to see how intentional this hospital environment is because of people like Meg.
One of Meg's specialties is overseeing the children's playrooms. These playrooms provide a safe and fun space for children to play, especially for children who are there for a longer stay. The design of each playroom is unique and beautiful.
A crucial rule in many playrooms is that they are a "no poke" zone, meaning no medical procedures are performed in these rooms. They are purely intended for kids to be kids. The rooms are filled with toys, crafts, and books—a child's paradise. I visited four playrooms during my visit and found each one to be clean, full of color, toys, and arts and crafts. For example, the ceilings of one were painted with clouds, and another showed an individual painting per ceiling panel.
By nature, medical spaces are designed to be sterile environments. They have to be to maintain the cleanliness that is so imperative to maintaining the health of medical environments. That being said, the bright white fluorescent lights, the sterility, the masks, the hard materials, the metal tables, and the overall coldness can contribute to making an environment that is, in a word, dreaded.
Something I discovered during my visit to Mott Children's Hospital was its ranking as the best children's hospital in Michigan. It's known for its prestige of care and performance in a wide variety of specialties. Yet its excellent performance extends beyond medical care. Each space in the children's hospital was unlike any medical environment I'd previously visited. Each floor had a human touch. The staff was friendly. The lighting was bright but not obnoxious. There were figures in the entryway. Colorful artwork lined the hallway, and innovative design choices created an interesting, fun environment.
During my conversation with Meg, I learned how much of this design is intended to make kids feel at home.
"We want to be as kid-friendly and as normal as possible. We don't want a kid to walk in, and it feels overly sterile," Meg said. "That's why the cabinets are not white, and they're covered with butterflies. We want the eye of the child to be on what's fun and what's bright, not what's white and sterile, clean and scary."
They intentionally create an environment that is as least intimidating and scary as possible. There is a lot of terror and pain that goes into medical spaces, and the goals of Meg and the hospital are to create as positive an experience as possible. Playrooms are also designed to be places where children don't have to worry about their problems outside of the play. "The patients lead the way in this space," Meg said. "Our conversations tend to steer away from family and away from what they're (potentially) missing out on. We focus on what's happening in the here and now."
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After I spoke with Meg, I ran into one of the volunteers, whom we'll call Jess.
12 volunteers work specifically in the hospital's playrooms. The shifts are three hours long once a week, and a typical shift often starts with some cleaning, making sure the toys and space are cleaned up from any previous use. Then the primary purpose of the volunteer shift is to play and engage with the patients and families who are there. Another common activity is visiting individual patients in their rooms. Many patients may be unable to leave their room for a variety of reasons, so for volunteers to bring fun and engaging activities with human interaction is a really valuable purpose for the volunteers to do. In Jess' words, "We have patients all the way from just newborns to like 21-year-olds. So I will hold babies sometimes, play with toddlers, and bring games to play with older kids. So I've done everything from, you know, battleship to watching movies. There's a lot of variety, but it's just about hanging out with them (the kids) and enriching their experience."
Countless scientific studies show the benefits of social interactions for individuals' health and well-being. These volunteers are bringing the value of these simple social interaction benefits to many patients.
"There's not a lot of fun spaces in hospitals. Specifically not adult settings," Jess said.
"It's really cool to be a part of kind of the only space in the children's hospital that is a playroom, you know, and it's meant to be just kind of like that safe, restful break place for kids."
This whole project made me think about why other hospitals aren't implementing even some of these tactics to make their spaces more positive. Jess mentioned this same thought in our conversation. "I view this ( playroom) as a third space that doesn't really exist in the hospital system typically," Jess said. "This is that third space where it's community building and a restful space that I don't think is common in hospitals. Especially not something I've seen in adult hospitals at all."
I'm sure many hospitals incorporate many of these design choices, and there are countless organizations that serve this very mission, to bring warmth and humanity into the medical environment. Nevertheless, I suspect the future of hospital spaces will be reflective of the beautiful third space I discovered at Mott Children's Hospital.
I'm so thankful I had the opportunity to explore this beautiful space and shine a light on some of the inner workings of this magical place. This space has done so much more good than it will ever know, not just because of the doctors who heal the patients, but because of the intentionality that goes into every art piece hanging on the wall and the overall feeling that this is a space where families can enter and feel like they are at a home away from home. A place where life bubbles all around, and encouragement, both visible and invisible, is present. This intentionality will continue to bless individuals and families to come.
On the center of the wall in the last playroom I visited are the words "Create with Joy" and that is exactly what the space of Mott Children's Hospital has done.