by the Hospital Senses Collective
‘Even in these modern days we are still searching for the perfect floor, one that is hard-wearing, smooth without being slippery, quiet, sanitary, non-absorbent, resilient, of pleasant appearance, relatively inexpensive, and lastly, one that will not wear out hospital shoes in a fortnight’. The Hospital, November 1930, 276.
The pursuit of ‘sanitary’ flooring created new sensory problems in the modern hospital corridor. Hospitals removed carpets, leading to acoustic reverberation on the hard flooring. Over the course of the twentieth century, sound-absorbent ceiling tiles were installed to combat the problem, changing the aesthetics of the corridor. In the service of ‘resilience’, floors also became more difficult to walk on and resulted in a less comfortable experience when navigating the hospital.
‘Sterility’ is a sensory concept as much as a clinical one. Would a soft carpet in the hospital feel sterile, even if it has an antimicrobial coating? Does seeing a shiny floor reassure you that it is germ-free, even if you do not know whether it was cleaned or just polished? By thinking about these questions in sensory terms we may begin to understand how atmospheres of ‘hygiene’ are produced.
The visual and tactile aspects of the hospital floor represent the features expected of a modern hospital. The polished corridor floor becomes a symbol of cleanliness, as the white wall once was. To quote one hospital design journal, there is a common belief that ‘if it’s shiny, it must be clean’.[1] Even the ‘best’ available hardwearing materials need to be maintained. The processes of cleaning, maintenance and repair result in a constantly evolving corridor sensescape. The practicalities of cleaning and maintenance in working hospitals make it almost impossible to replace whole areas of flooring, resulting in patchworks of repair that carry with them the history of the floor’s use and of the many feet that have travelled over it. The floor itself carries a form of sensory memory through its wear and tear, showing the routes that hospital staff, visitors and patients have walked over days, weeks, months, years, decades.
Maintenance is as much a daily routine as it is a long-term strategy. In the pursuit of a floor of ‘pleasant appearance’ the hospital corridor needs regular cleaning and polishing. Hard floors introduce the floor buffer or polisher into the daily routine of the hospital. Over the course of this century the standards of floor maintenance increased in line with concerns about controlling cross-infection, and by the post-war period the vacuum and electric floor polisher were a repeated focus of patients’ complaints about noise.[2] Technological changes have since made such machines quieter (though not silent), more efficient and more multi-functional.
Floor maintenance technologies also shaped the embodied experiences of doing cleaning and maintenance. Operating floor polishers results in physiological changes such as ‘vibration syndrome’ among hospital cleaners. For these staff the routines and rituals of corridor floor-cleaning can also become embedded over time, through practice and through the cleaning equipment itself.
References
- S. Black, ‘Interior Design Trends’, Hospital Development, 10:1 (1982), 24.
- D. M. Hinks, The Most Cruel Absence of Care: Report of a follow- up study of noise control in hospital prepared from the comments made by patients in seven selected hospitals (King’s Fund, 1974); King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London, Noise Control in Hospitals: A report of an enquiry (King’s Fund, 1958); King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London, Noise Control in Hospitals: Report of a follow-up enquiry (King’s Fund, 1960).
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