Healing Gardens: promoting health quality in a specialized intensive rehabilitation hospital

Objectives. A growing amount of evidences suggests that nature elements can increase health quality of hospitalized patients (1). The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of an intensive rehabilitation hospital environment and the recovery processes of patients in a post-acute phase. Methods. The present study involves two phases. In the first one, now concluded, we attempted to determine the characteristics of the exterior spaces that best fits with needs of our patients: a group of landscape architects visited the site, met the hospital staff, and realized the project of the garden. At the same time, we collected data from 95 neurologic, orthopedic, and pneumologic patients who were hospitalized before the construction of the garden. This group will be considered as a control group for the second phase of the study, in which we will compare patients who did not use garden and patients who will have access to it. The outcome measures are: level of disability, quality of life (QOL) and depression symptoms. Results. Some characteristics of the garden that are thought to be salient for our clinical population have been identified. We are able to show some master plans of the project. Moreover, we found a significant difference in QOL and depression between the three groups of patients. Discussion. The benefits from a garden should be considered to reducing the disability in post-acute patients in an intensive rehabilitation hospital.