• promote a sense of calm;
• offer a more comfortable atmosphere;
• encourage self-strengthening thoughts;
• focus on the importance of the individual experience;
• engage the senses in a positive way with presentations that can be explored through visual pleasure, play, memory and reflection

BACKGROUND
In September 1997, ARTATWORK, an artist organization and Lakeridge Health Corporation / Oshawa introduced a discussion to consider additional ways of creating a healing atmosphere for their patients. The following features some of the concerns and ideas that acted as start-up points for consideration. These ideas developed into an art and healing program that is to be implimented throughout the hospital.

INTRODUCTION
The redevelopment of Lakeridge Health Corporation offers the opportunity to explore one major goal hospital's are meant to achieve; to be healers. In these times this means taking into account changing issues and perceptions about priorities - about what is financially reasonable and efficient, as well as the best ways of being helpful. Deciding what is important is always a challenge. Reflecting a healing atmosphere for patients, families of patients, and staff is not only an important symbol for hospitals; it can help create an atmosphere that promotes healing in its own right. The following explores ways a visual art program can contribute toward creating an atmosphere that reflect and promote Lakeridge Health Corporation's goals.

CONSIDERATIONS
Hospitals are generally approached by patients with confused feelings of fear and hope. Fear and hope fueled by stories read in the press, seen in movies and TV, and that are told by relatives and friends. Stories of dramas played out as outstanding life saving practices, but others of oversight and wrong practice with tragic results.
Information about health in both conventional and alternative practices offer endless new discoveries, confirming or contradicting what we thought we knew. We are asked to believe any number of extreme things about our health: that we can heal ourselves; that prayer helps; that chemotherapy is the solution; that mastectomy is or is not the answer. The patient is inundated with conflicting health information. There are few assurance that the medical professional has one prefect answer.
Adding to this confusion, the hospital patients have been separated from the support and regular rhythms of their lives, removed from loved ones, home, work or school.
In daily practice people allow their bodies to be touched only by those that they trust and love. Respect and control of personnel space is a prerequisite for normal levels of comfort. As a hospital patient, regular ideas of personal space must be set aside. It may be necessary to be willingly tested, probed, hurt in the hands of strangers.
The level of stress generated by these situations can be overwhelming.

To invest the hospital atmosphere in a way that helps control stress and establishes trust with an environment that communicates good care makes good common sense. It also responds to growing research indicating that environment has important effects on health including:

Patients
The calmer and more comfortable we make patients the less stress they suffer. The result is more co-operation and motivation toward helping in the process of their own healing.

Families
The better hospitals support families of patients with a possitive atmosphere, the better families can focus on being supportive of their hospitalized family member.

Staff
The more engaged and motivated hospital staff are, the better and more caring they can perform their professional duties.

Achieving a less stressful, more comfortable and engaged environment helps maximize both human potential and cost effectiveness. A better environment improves the basic quality of life, resulting in more effective and efficient health care.

With the above in mind, it is important to carefully develop the physical environment of the hospital. It acts as a window for intentions in ways such as:
• expressing the attitude the hospital has toward patients, patient's family and the staff
• generating a response from the patient and their families, be it: comfort and trust, or fear and anxiety.

A comprehensive art program can help shape the hospital atmosphere and the content explored within individual artworks may be capable of offering a healing influence in their own right. *

WHAT AN ART AND HEALING PLAN SHOULD ACHIEVE
The art program's fuction is to contribute to a caring atmosphere that reflects and promotes the process of healing by:
• Offering a less alienated atmosphere
• Creating opportunities that offer an affirming engagement
• Incouraging self-strengthening thoughts
• Promoting a sense of calm
• Focusing on the importance of the individual experience
• Engaging the senses in a positive way with presentations that can be explored through beauty, play, memory, reflection
• Exhibiting works of art that have content developed to be healing

CONCLUSION
There is much to be gained from an Art and Healing Program at Lakeridge Health Corporation. Benefits include:
• An enhanced and attractive appearance of the Hospital
• An engaged and enlivened environment
• An atmosphere that will communicate the hospital's broad commitment to patients, families of patients and staff
• A valuable and prestigious collection of artwork
• A collection of artworks that will offer content to focus, calm and help heal