The hospital that takes patients recovered from covid to look at the sea: Injection of vitality

There is nothing better than the view of the sea and its smells and perfumes to facilitate the recovery of a patient who has remained closed for weeks in intensive care for covid, from this idea doctors and managers of theHospital del Mar in Barcelona, in Spain, to kick off a practice that has now become a custom: bring the patients recovered from Covid to look at the sea but still in hospital for its long-term consequences. An activity started as a sort of liberation act in the middle of the pandemic, in May, then suspended in July with the arrival of more cases of Covid-19 in the hospital and now resumed and has become part of a program that seeks to study the potential beneficial effects of the sea on the mood and consequently on the health of Covid patients on the mend.

In reality, as its name makes clear, the location of the hospital right in front of the sea has always favored this practice and doctors had already tried this path in the past for other non-covid patients but the coronavirus pandemic had imposed the stop. Then the decision to resume accompanying on a stretcher even the now negative covid patients on the terrace overlooking the new stop in summer right on the beach. The declared purpose is to promote their psychological and emotional recovery, after days and days closed in a room and maybe intubated, and therefore also the physical one.

The last patient to be accompanied to see the sea is Mr. Francisco España, 60 years old, hospitalized in the Hospital del Mar for more than 50 days for covid and also ended up in intensive care. After a long battle the man has improved and is no longer positive for the virus, so on Friday he had the pleasure of going out on the sunny Barcelona promenade, seeing the sea and breathing the air without pipes.

“Although short, these outings are an” injection of vitality “and they improve the psycho-physical state of patients who spend more time in the ICU which is often characterized by introversion and anxiety that interferes with the positive evolution of the patient “explained Joan Ramon Masclans, head of intensive care at the Barcelona hospital, adding:” We have seen that drugs alone do not solve this problem “.

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