My dad had to have an inpatient surgical procedure this week, and said surgery was performed at a private hospital owned by a group of doctors. I initially pulled up the hospital's Web site to confirm driving directions, but I lingered and kicked the tires a bit, because I have a client with a similar business model, and also because I was just generally curious.
The site offered a "virtual tour" of the hospital, which turned out to be a short but fairly slick promotional piece, complete with long camera pans, graceful "dissolves," soothing background music and an equally soothing female narrator.
Some of the things that the female narrator said were FUNNNNNNNNNNNNY.
Three items of note:
1) The surgical waiting room was described as an "idyllic space."
Let's go to the dictionary, shall we?
Idyllic. adj \ī-ˈdi-lik: 1. Extremely happy, peaceful or picturesque.
It's a surgical waiting room.
2. Charmingly rustic.
Not sure that the idea of a rustic hospital waiting room - or a rustic hospital anything - appeals to me. Kind of prefer my hospitals on the modern side. Unless we're talking about "Appalachian Emergency Room." You know, on SNL? Chris Parnell always had something improbable up his backside, and Amy Poehler would come in complaining of an injury caused by her "druggie son" and then bogart the hospital gown to wear as a housedress. Funny stuff. Only time that "rustic" and "hospital" have ever seemed compatible to me.
3. Simple and carefree.
Again, I have default back to "surgical waiting room." Hardly my definition of "simple and carefree." "I was worried about Grandpa's procedure, and then I stepped into this beautiful room, whereupon I was transported to a mythical paradise not unlike those featured in the pages of this significantly aged back issue of Travel and Leisure Magazine, and I totally forgot that my loved one's life hung in the balance until the doctor nudged me out of my reverie, and offered me a complimentary cappuccino."
2) The narrator made a point of stating that the adult outpatient recovery rooms have a yellow color scheme, and the color scheme in the pediatric wing is blue. This is relevant how, exactly? For identification purposes? "If you see a lot of blue, you probably made a left when you should have made a right. Oh, and you probably also noticed that all of the patients in recovery are under four feet tall and clutching stuffed animals, and have far less nose and ear hair than your Uncle Norman." But this makes more sense than the notion that color scheme might be a deciding factor in selecting a hospital facility. For starters, you don't really pick - the doctor does. And, also, I find it hard to believe that anyone on the fence about consenting to a procedure ever said, "Well, I wasn't going to go through with it - but then I learned that the recovery rooms were PREDOMINANTLY YELLOW."
3) The inpatient suites were touted for their "hotel-like" feel, and the narrator went so far as to say that, because a lot of the monitors and stuff are hidden behind cabinet doors, "you may forget that you are in a hospital and think that you are in a hotel." Um, you know what's keeping me from getting confused? THE IV DRIP LINE INTO MY ARM, AND THE "ARTWORK" THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE A VITALS CHART WITH A DRY-ERASE REMINDER THAT I GET THE DIABETIC MEAL.
For the record, it was a nice hospital - but a hospital's a hospital, you know? Unless it's fictional, and in Appalachia, in which case it's HILARIOUS.
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