Restorative environment: Caregivers' evaluation on hospitalized children's preference towards garden

Abstract

Hospitalization often erodes the feelings of toddlers and young children that cause regressive behaviors and stress resulting to reduced cognitive performance, helplessness, restlessness, crying, anxiety, and elevated blood pressure. Having the children experiencing a garden setting, either in passive or active mode, can arouse their senses that nurture their inductive and deductive, motor-impulses development and reflective thinking capabilities and thus reduce the stress that would foster their recovery. This study investigates the impact of garden on the psychological well-being of pediatric patients, toddlers and young children aged 2 to 12 years, by determining their preferences toward the domains (properties and attributes) of a garden and ward in two Malaysian hospitals. It uses two sets of administered questionnaires evaluated by the caregivers, Set A for mothers as surrogate respondents, and Set B for ward nurses. Univariate analysis of the data found that 94% of the pediatric patients (n=360) preferred the garden than the ward. Bivariate analysis on the mother’s evaluation data found that the mean preference scores of the garden are greater than the ward in all domains except one. The domains are refreshing smell, fresh air, full with light, cheerful environment, pleasant sound, scenic view, open space, free to play, not confined, home feeling, and place for variety of activities. Moreover, 71% to 93% of the nurses viewed that the garden affords the patients to (1) play freely and safely either alone or with peers, (2) escape from the confined ward environment into an open space where they can observe animals, and (3) gain control on their movement. As a result the patients feel cheerful and agile to the garden setting suggesting theirs cognitive functioning are restored.