West Park Hospital – Cody, WY

Change of Scenery at West Park Hospital ED

Lynette Barsness, RN, Emergency Department Nurse Manager
West Park Hospital – Cody, WY

New Sereneview curtains in the E.D. patient areas feature local mountain scenes, as photographed by hospital employee Dave Burke. Those mountain scenes are an example of the of the hospital’s Planetree philosophy of healing, which seeks to treat patients as a whole person, not just an illness.

There has been a change of scenery in the West Park Hospital Emergency Department, in Cody, WY. New Sereneview curtains in the patient areas feature local mountain scenes, as photographed by Dave Burke, an employee in the Materials Management Department of West Park Hospital.

Emergency Department Nurse Manager Lynette Barsness, RN, asked Burke, a skilled photographer, to submit 24 photos of the local landscape. Then department staff and physicians voted to select nine scenes to feature on Sereneview privacy curtains, and the hospital board approved.

The mountain scenes on Sereneview privacy curtains are an example of the West Park Hospital Planetree philosophy of healing, which seeks to treat patients as a whole person, not just an illness. The hospital’s Planetree Healing Environments team aims to create a hospital environment that is aesthetically calming, comfortable and healing for patients.

Picture window view

“According to a 1993 study, nature scenes, like those on our Sereneview curtains, have a significant effect on a patient’s anxiety and pain level,” the hospital’s Planetree Coordinator, Dawn Garrison, says. “The study suggests that patients experience less anxiety and suffer less intense pain when exposed to landscape art or scenes. Landscapes with water, trees and mountains specifically had a positive effect.”

“We’ve had a really positive reaction to the Sereneview curtains from the staff as well as from patients,” says West Park Hospital Nurse Manager Barsness.

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