Hospice brings the outside inside for patients after £10,000 competition win

L-R Fran Lightfoot, Deputy Director of Income Generation, Adel Bennett, Ward Sister, and Helen Knowles, Director of Income Generation. (Photo credit: Visualite.)

A Yorkshire hospice is helping patients to shine a little brighter, after winning clinical lighting solutions worth £10,000.

Wakefield Hospice has brought the outside inside with a series of LED panels from Visualite, transforming the look and feel of corridors and rooms across the building.

The hospice won a £10,000 Visualite healthcare sector competition and had the panels installed free of charge by a local contractor.

Visualite solutions are sensory lighting panels that create the effect of natural lighting indoors, projecting high-definition natural images illuminated by LEDs.

The panels, sold through nationwide wholesalers YESSS Electrical, allow patients to experience the warmth and familiarity of outdoor scenes in spaces without external windows.

The LED wall and ceiling panels create a relaxing ambience, helping to calm anxiety, reduce claustrophobia and enhance wellbeing.

Wakefield Hospice won the Visualite competition after demonstrating their knowledge of the impact of the environment on people who have advanced active, progressive and life-threatening illness, describing their vision for their internal environment and illustrating how staff, patients, families and visitors would benefit from the installation of the lighting.

The competition was open to all UK healthcare organisations and was judged by a panel of healthcare experts.

After their win, hospice staff worked with YESSS Electrical’s Wakefield branch and took on board patient feedback to curate the most appropriate images for each panel location, as different scenes, colours and details suit different applications and elicit different emotional responses.

Calming natural scenes

All of the panels have now been installed at the hospice, which has been providing expert care to local people with life-limiting illnesses for more than 30 years.

Hospice communications officer Ryan Colliar-Grint said: “The Visualite panels offer a great way to brighten up spaces throughout Wakefield Hospice.

A number of our corridors are central in the building so do not have windows, and these light boxes on our walls and ceilings provide a great alternative to mimic the experience of natural light and beautiful scenery.”

A member of the clinical team said: “Having the Visualite boxes around Wakefield Hospice is such a wonderful feature as they brighten up the space.

The majority of our images are of nature which is so calming to be around for our patients, their families and our staff.”

Visualite panels have been installed in healthcare locations across the country, including major sites such as University Hospital Southampton, Sheffield Children’s Hospital and the Royal Free and Barnet hospitals in London.

The Visualite system can have a powerful impact in hospitals and medical environments but is equally valuable in educational spaces and sensory rooms, retail and leisure facilities, as well as offices and boardrooms.

Visualite have a wide range of high-definition images to select from, but clients can also incorporate their own images and artwork to create bespoke panels.

Built with a tough outer protective coating, the Visualite system offers fully wipeable surfaces for ease of maintenance and longevity.

Visualite creator Steve Nelson commented: “Many environments lend themselves to Visualite, but at Wakefield Hospice we can really see how our system will have an amazing impact on patients, staff and visitors.”

Wakefield-based electrical and mechanical contractor E2M generously installed the Visualite panels free of charge at the hospice.

The firm’s managing director Mark Gibson said: “E2M have worked with Wakefield Hospice in the past and feel it’s a brilliant organisation that’s deserving of great things for all the help and care they provide to others.

Being involved in this project, installing aesthetic lighting to spaces that bring a feeling of the outside in, was our way of contributing to the hospice and the community which it serves.”