When someone is admitted to the hospital, they may well feel stressed and anxious—perhaps uncertain about what medical tests will uncover or worried about upcoming procedures and surgeries. Or, in some cases, patients are bored, feeling frustrated over having little to do, or they’re lonely because they don’t have many (if any!) visitors.
Regardless of which of these emotions a patient experiences, they aren’t uplifting. This can, in turn, lead to or increase levels of stress and/or depression and anxiety—and even trigger physical symptoms such as high blood pressure, heartburn, headaches, insomnia, and more. These physical and emotional symptoms can complicate the efforts involved in managing and improving the patient’s health.
Modifying the Environment to Reduce Stress
According to the Journal of Environmental Psychology, there are three helpful ways to reduce stress in a healthcare setting and therefore improve the overall patient experience:
- Providing opportunities for environmental control
- Social support
- Positive distractions
Providing environmental control can involve, the article notes, “bedside dimmers to control lighting, or television that is controllable by individual patients.” Social support can include both psychological and material support that others provide to the patient while the third—positive distraction—describes features of the environment that create “positive feelings, effortlessly hold attention and interest, and therefore may block or reduce worrisome thoughts.”
A TV in hospital rooms can address the third aspect of stress reduction while also contributing to a patient’s ability to engage in social interactions by allowing them to keep up to date with information and entertainment that would typically be consumed at home.
Multi-Faceted Solution: Hospital TVs
First, a TV in hospital rooms gives a patient a sense of control when they are able to view menus, watch their favorite shows, adjust volume levels, and so forth in user-friendly ways. When they can watch their favorite programs—ones that they might have normally watched at home with friends and family members—they can socially engage with others on the phone or during visits about what they watched, contributing to the second factor that can reduce stress.
Hospital TVs can also provide a wonderful distraction from the stress and anxiety that can be inherent in a hospital stay. It’s natural to become engaged in entertaining programs and thrilling sports competitions, which allows the patient to think about something different from their health conditions and treatments.
As the Journal of Experimental Psychology notes, these aspects can help to reduce patient stress, contributing to positive feelings that can assist them in navigating their hospital stay.
Benefits of Hospital Grade TVs
Healthcare TVs can provide patients with the entertainment they crave and allow hospitals to customize welcome screens with their branding or cross-promote their other facilities. Other ways in which hospital grade TVs can provide positive distractions include the following:
- Streaming music and other relaxing sounds; the Journal of Experimental Psychology lists music as another positive distracting experience for patients
- Using the internet to play games and engage in other pleasurable activities that provide an uplifting form of distraction
- Viewing the day’s menus and allowing patients to make selections that fit within their healthcare plan; this is another way in which patients are given a sense of control during their hospital stays
Healthcare TVs can also be used to enhance the patient experience by providing patient education. Patients can be educated about their specific health conditions and treatments in ways that dovetail with their levels of health literacy in the language of their choice. Education delivered through healthcare TVs can prepare them for conversations with their medical team and allow them to participate more fully in their own healthcare decisions and empower them along their journey.
This also facilitates the use of telehealth, further expanding the ways that hospital TVs can be used to benefit patients, educate them, and provide them with optimal experiences.
More About Hospital Grade TVs
On the surface, hospital grade TVs may look like consumer televisions, but that’s not really the case. Significant differences exist that can enhance the patient experience, including their ability to withstand heavy use; while a consumer TV is typically designed for eight to twelve hours of daily use, hospital grade TVs can be used around the clock.
Advanced technologies allow healthcare TVs to meet stringent UL safety standards, and these televisions can effectively dissipate heat, reduce risk from electrical shocks and fires, and lower hazardous radiation. They’re designed for ease of sanitation, too, to manage germs that exist in hospital settings.
Plus, they’re designed and built for safe, streamlined usage by staff and patients alike, which frees up your staff for important health-related tasks and improves the patient experience. In-demand features include built-in pillow speakers that integrate with nurse call systems in seamless ways, and screens that offer wide viewing angles for ease of viewing around the hospital room.
MDM Offers a Wide Selection of Modern Hospital TVs
When you’re ready to upgrade your organization’s healthcare TVs, we can help. As one of the country’s largest hospital TV supplier, we provide facilities with quality products and services they need—all in our one-stop shop. MDM offers unsurpassed customer service as we help you to select the hospital grade TVs you want and need at competitive pricing (thanks to our deep industry connections and big buying power!).
Because we recognize that no one-size-fits-all solution exists for healthcare facilities, we’ll listen carefully to what you need. Then, we’ll provide personalized recommendations for your existing infrastructure, including accessories that mesh with your hospital TVs of choice. If we don’t have what you need on our website, we’ll be happy to work directly with you to find precisely the right healthcare TVs for your facilities within your budget and timeline.
To describe your needs and get professional guidance on what healthcare TVs are best for your facilities, just reach out online or call 800-359-6741. We’ll be happy to help you select exactly what you need!