Ventilation and Warming, Nursing Essay Example

Though the practice of keeping the air that patient's breath pure should be the basics of every hospital, most hospitals neglect this primary need. The practice of ensuring ventilation has been ignored, although that is a lethal practice. Owing to that, there has been a lot of spread of diseases like effluvia within the hospitals. The practice of keeping the air clean and pure should, therefore, be embraced or even better be made a compulsory practice (Hoe et al., 2016). There is a contention between keeping patients warm and keeping the windows open to allow ventilation. A clear balance should be created to ensure that patients a kept from cold and at the same time ensure they breath fresh air. That will reduce effluvia which is the harmful or unpleasant discharge from a patient's body.

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Health of Houses

The health of houses begins with their construction. Therefore, every construction should be made in such a manner that it follows five key factors that ensure that the buildings are healthy (Jung et al., 2015). They include; light, pure air, cleanliness, pure water and efficient drainage. Therefore, one fundamental thing is clear and need to be taken seriously-before occupying a room, house or any building, always ensure that it is healthy to live in, in so far as the five factors above are concerned.

Sanitary surveyor- is a person who undertakes a review of the public water system for purposes of assessing their supply of safe and clean drinking water.

Variety

Variety is a factor when it comes to a patient's recovery. Keeping a patient in a confined place with a monotonous setting psychologically slows the process of recovery. Variety helps the patient to vary their thoughts and thus keep them hopeful and keep their minds away from the thoughts of their state of sickness and that will be effective owing to the power of the mind on the body. Creation of variety for the patient can as well be as simple as having flowers placed next to patients' beds.

Nervous debility - is a nervous disorder that is related to both the mental and physical stress that leads to anxiety or depression.

Modern hospitals have, in a considerable degree, tried to observe sanitation and the state of their hospital buildings that lead to boosting of health conditions among people. Some of the factors that are closely observed in nowadays include; light, pure air, cleanliness, efficient drainage, and pure water. An example of such a hospital building is the New Hampshire Hospital. This hospital has undergone a lot of transformation from the time of establishment in 1842. To ensure a constant supply of clean water, the hospital built a dam across Bow Creek. However, when the capacity of the hospital continued to increase, there was a need to construct a well next to the spring close to the hospital.

The amount of fresh water supplied was 60,000 gallons of water a day, from the well alone. To reduce congestion in the hospital, Bancroft was built in 1892 and provided extra space for accommodation. It reduced the congestions that would otherwise cause distress of ventilation and air circulation. Twitchell House was additionally constructed in 1894 to offer more space for patients. It provides more freedom for patients and provides the aspect of variety because of the homelike setting that the building brings with it. In 1989, the hospital had constructed the best version of the hospital buildings, with Adult Psychiatric Services Building being one of them. The building is a state of the art facility for psychiatric care for New Hampshire elderly and adult populations. The architectural designs of the building were made such that the building allows adequate amount of light to reach key areas such as patient care to increase or assist the process of healing. Therefore, Nightingale's work has been observed and built upon to provide the foundation for the construction and establishment of state of the art hospital buildings. Although most hospitals have complied with Nightingale's provision of practices that should be observed in hospitals, some are not yet compliant with this provisions. Therefore, there is a great need to review the state of hospitals and other medical centers to create uniformity and in the process, increase the overall health.

Nightingale's work is comprised of basic provisions which are critical to the well-being of patients (Notes on Nursing, n.d). For example, factors like sanitation are critical to the health of patients in hospitals. Despite these factors being basic, they have been ignored by many medical and healthcare institutions. The best thing to consider about these factors is that they are neither complicated nor hard to implement. Take, for instance, the issue of variety; a hospital can have flowers laid next to hospital beds or increase the variety of colors surrounding the hospital rooms, wards or beds. It goes without saying that such factors as good ventilation in hospital rooms will reduce the spread of airborne diseases and good drainage reduce contamination of waterborne diseases. Also, before deciding on the type of hospital building to buy or hire, much needs to be examined regarding lighting.

The fundamental question that one needs to ask him/herself here is how much natural light is permitted to enter the building. It is unfortunate that most hospitals did not consider the aspect of natural light ventilation or drainage within the building before buying or hiring it. In that case, there is a need for reevaluation according to the factors reflected on by Nightingale to ensure compliance of the hospitals with the set provisions. Lack of it would be equivalent to having a killer person into the hospital premises with no objection. If hospitals and the medical practice would want to reduce cases of disease contamination, there will be a great need to have the basics adhered to first; then all other complications would be resolved. One way of achieving this is through the creation of strict laws and regulations that examines such provisions as Nightingale's, to ensure that before any hospital is granted any permission to operate, there is adherence to the basics. All the hospitals that are already established should also be reviewed, and corrective measures should be put in place to create uniformity in all the hospitals operating. So far, Nightingale's work has been of great impact to the management of both airborne and waterborne diseases. At least a couple of hospitals have been able to establish themselves around Nightingale's work, and the impact has been great. One example of such a case is the New Hampshire Hospital which has been able to undergo great and positive transformation since the time of its establishment.

References

Heo, D. A., Lee, J., Huh, E. H., & Moon, K. W. (2015). Problems of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Outbreak from the Perspective of Environmental Health-Focusing on Control of Indoor Air Quality in Hospitals. Korean Journal of Environmental Health Sciences, 41(3), 216-221.

Jung, C. C., Wu, P. C., Tseng, C. H., & Su, H. J. (2015). Indoor air quality varies with ventilation types and working areas in hospitals. Building and Environment, 85, 190-195.

Notes on Nursing. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2018, from http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/nightingale/nursing/nursing.html