Potential Space in Hospitals: Insight From a Health Psychologist

Humanization is a challenge for the future of healthcare. Architecture may play a major role in designing spaces that enhance communication and help the patient to maintain mental health during physical illness. Health psychologists struggle to find adequate space for taking care of their patients. There is an urgent need to better define how relational space, defined here as potential, can be guaranteed in everyday hospital psychological consultations.

The author relates to his work as a health psychologist and psychotherapist in a consultation-liaison psychiatry (CLP) service operating in a general hospital in Lugano (Switzerland).

An autoethnographic method is applied through calling on childhood memories on architecture and analyzing insights regarding the healthcare space in everyday work as a psychologist. Photographs and drawings are employed as evocative material.

Autoethnographical data show that building interiors can be a metaphor for an inner dimension. Spaces can be perceived as depersonalized in hospital. Through psychoanalytical theory, it is argued that space becomes ideal for CLP if it can ensure the continuity of the patient's self during hospitalization. Proximity, confidentiality, and privacy are healthcare design requirements to be considered for favoring potential space and psychological intervention.

Fostering potential space represents an outstanding challenge for the hospital of tomorrow in order to humanize healthcare spaces and promote a person-centered approach.