Hospital room Swimming in bacteria, oxygen thieves and a health and safety risk around medical equipment. Who’d have thought that a bunch of flowers could present such a risk to life and limb? Yet these are just some of the reasons given by UK hospitals for banning (or seriously discouraging) visitors from bringing in a lovely bunch for ailing friends and family.
It’s a policy that seems a tad extreme when for years bringing a small bouquet and a bag of grapes was practically written into the hospital visitors’ handbook. Giskin Day and Naiome Carter of Imperial College London have taken a look at the evidence and talked to patients and staff at both the Royal Brompton Hospital and the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to find out if flowers deserve their bad buds reputation. The results are published on bmj.com
One of the questions the team looked at was 'what evidence do hospitals base their decisions on?' A study carried out back in 1973 found that the water in flower vases contained high levels of bacteria. "However, there’s no evidence to suggest that anyone has ever acquired an infection from flower water," explains Giskin Day. "In fact the Department of Health issued a statement saying that there’s no evidence of flower water causing an infection."
Removing flowers from patients’ bedsides at night was a common practice at the end of the last century. The reason? The flowers were competing with the patients for oxygen. This idea was knocked into the compost heap when studies showed that flowers had a negligible impact on the air composition on the wards. "Really it’s a management call," says Giskin Day. "Especially on emergency wards." You can see that having a vase of flowers in the way could be hazardous in an emergency, in case it went flying and water landed on an expensive piece of medical equipment.
However there is evidence from studies that flowers and plants have immediate and long-term beneficial effects on emotional reactions, mood, social behaviour and memory for both sexes. One trial considered in this research found that patients who had plants and flowers in their room needed significantly fewer pain killers following operations, had reduced systolic blood pressure and heart rate, less pain, anxiety and fatigue and had more positive feelings than patients in the control group.
"What amazed me was that it was so ad-hoc," says Giskin Day. "It can be different on each ward." Southend Hospital recently imposed a blanket ban on flowers at patients’ bedsides, for instance, while the Conquest Hospital in Hastings will allow flowers in oases, but not in vases. "We found that some wards will ask visitors to take their flowers home with them," says Giskin Day. "The students and I interviewed staff at the hospitals we visited. We found that even those who liked flowers had reservations about having them on the ward." The interviews produced some evidence that staff are more concerned with the practical implications of having flowers on the ward than the risk of infection. But you should be OK with a bag of grapes.