To Extend Health Resources in a Forested Hospital Environment

—A Comparison Between Artificial and Natural Plants—

抄録

Background : The improvement of healthcare surroundings for seriously ill inpatients has often been ignored. Plants are getting to be recognized as a good healing resource. However, in Japan they are utilized mostly in outpatient areas to compensate for outpatient complaints created by long waiting times, and few plants are utilized for inpatients. Furthermore, to extend health service resources, artificial plants could also be beneficial. However, little is known on psychological, physiological, and immunological effects of artificial plants for their implementation to hospital environments for those inpatients.
Subjects : 24 healthy college students. They were divided into two groups evenly (male =10, female = 2 in each group) .
Methods : The first group was brought to Rainforest Cafe, Chiba, Japan. The second group was brought to Tanzawa Forest, Kanagawa, Japan. Subjects in both groups were instructed to sit silently in the surroundings for 60 minutes. Psychological, physiological, and immunological data were taken at three time points : at baseline ; immediately after the intervention ; 60 minutes after the intervention.
Analysis : Student's t, ANOVA were utilized in the condition of α=0.05.
Results, Discussion and Conclusion : In both forest environments, all markers were improved, though the natural forest environment was statistically better than artificial forest environment. Artificial plants could be considered as a helpful health resource in hospitals too. Further study is recommended to compare artificial forest environment with non forest environment, for example, hospital rooms, to remove the effect of just sitting.