Is Your Hospital Lighting Helping or Hurting Your Employees and Patients?

More and more research is looking into how lighting impacts our healing. Whether it’s how specific light tools can be incorporated into a patient’s care regimen or how the main lighting impacts our stress levels, being able to control lighting is becoming more important. Here are three ways switching to customizable LED lighting can make your hospital healthier.

Make the night shift easier on employees.

The research has long been established that night shifts are hard on people’s bodies and brains. They increase stress, make heart conditions more likely, and can even increase the risk of cancer. That’s because the body’s natural circadian rhythm is thrown into disarray. Repair it to the best of your hospital’s ability by keeping your LEDs set at a cool white light setting that most closely mimics daylight. Not only can this reduce long-term depression and physical disorders, it can help your employees focus, adapt, and think on their feet.

Add color changeability to your lights.

Blue light is calming. Even aside from its use in more targeted healing, which is still being explored, different colors of light do impact people’s moods. If you need to promote a calming environment in even high-stress areas, tinging the light with a bit of blue can take the edge off of a situation. So add the feature in lobbies and the emergency waiting room.

Keep the color-rendering index (CRI) high.

Light doesn’t just provide visibility; it also impacts how people see everything from depth to actual color. Keep your hospital rooms free of lights that influence how colors are perceived, or make sure the lighting tones can be changed between calming colors and daylight-level illumination. LEDs have a wide CRI range, so make sure your nurses and doctors can switch to a setting that mimics incandescent and natural light. This improves their ability to accurately diagnose based on color and hue when looking at blood, injuries, and eyes.