Color, Art in Patient Rooms Boosts QOL After TJA

While taking the often-frightening experience of hospitalization and converting it to something uplifting can be daunting, researchers from the Med Uni Graz Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology in Austria rose to the challenge. In a randomized controlled study of 80 patients, the team at the Med Uni Graz Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology in Austria has opened up the world of hospitalization to a wider color palette.

Their work, “Positive effect of colors and art in patient rooms on patient recovery after total hip or knee arthroplasty: A randomized controlled trial,” was published in the September 7, 2021, edition of Wien Klin Wochensch.

Pushing the envelope, department chair Andreas Leithner investigated factors that affect in-hospital well-being. “As studies have indicated, patient well-being plays an important role in rehabilitation, and the clinical environment has a clear influence on fear, stress response, sleep and pain tolerance. Frequent disturbances, noise or (too) bright light have been described as problematic environmental factors that influence psychological components,” stated Andreas Leithner.

Preoperative data on mood, anxiety and depression, quality of life and pain were collected on both the intervention group (in colorful rooms) and the control group (in a standard room with white walls). “The colors were selected in accordance with the ideas of Graz artist Richard Kriesche, who developed six color codes for the intervention rooms under the assumption that bright colors have a calming effect on mood,” stated the news release. “Each patient was accommodated in a room with multiple beds and shared the room with three other patients. Each room had two windows. Since the view out the window might have an influence on mood, each group stayed in rooms with the same view…”

No significant differences in mood were found between the two groups after the surgeries. “The results on quality of life went up continuously in both groups after the operation, yet interestingly six days after the operation, significantly higher values were observed in the intervention group,” said Andreas Leithner.

Artist Richard Kriesche told OTW, “As an artist I’ve been working in the context of art and society. I [wanted to] to relocate my artwork to people’s real live context, for instance in a clinic with kids having problems with rehabilitation, or [for the elderly] in a mentally disordered state in a retirement home.”

“My project, ‘HELP’ at the Lkh-Graz (Medical University Graz) has opened the possibility to rethink the ‘whiteness of a hospital’ being a frightening experience for patients. Instead of this clean whitewashed situation I tried to find a solution to normalize the surrounding for the patients [with an eye toward what] one finds in the real world.”

“[It was challenging] to get support for an ‘advanced art-concept,’ which is not located in any of my usual art-environments, neither in a modern art museum nor in a contemporary art gallery—but in a common but outstanding environment, with its daily human challenges of life and death. Also, I had to get some of the professors at the hospital interested, as well as their female and male nurses. Lastly, it required the Sword of Damocles to keep the interest up and keep everybody motivated over the months it took to do this risky ‘health-and-art-experience.’”

According to Professor Kriesche, building on the results of this study will depend on future research and study funding. “I will get in touch with parts of the advanced international art community and also with some art magazines to convince them to publish this research project. I consider it to be artwork in the general sense and interpretation of the arts even beyond the contemporary.”