plants in hospitals

[J Preiss--Seq Anal]

        I have not done quite the research as Charles Delwiche, but I did do 
some not very scientific polling about current practices of plants in a 
hospital setting. The source is my wife. She has worked in 3 hospitals in the 
last 10 years. One is a trauma-only institution and everything except cards 
were expressely forbidden simply because every bed unit was a potential 
setting for surgical procedures - usually simple, but each had the possibility 
of quickly becoming quite unsimple. The proscription was a simple extension of 
the prohibition of plants in the operating ampitheater. The card policy could 
be terminated if the patient was/became immunocompromised (usually called 
reverse isolation) or was in isolation for an extremely virulent pathogen. The 
other two are Catholic hospitals and plants are not only allowed, but the in-
house flower shop has plants (as well as flower arrangements) for sale. The 
only fine-print associated with the policy concerns critical care units which 
have the same policy, and basis for the policy, as the trauma-only 
institution. This policy had a quirk in one hospital because, while the halls 
were very wide, the patient's rooms are very cramped with a window through the 
wall with the hall. (Presumably this structure was to allow GOD an easier time 
when making "house calls" but I do not explicitly know the reason for this 
architectural quirk) The explicit policy stated that plants were not allowed 
in the rooms - to avoid unnecessary housekeeping expenses resulting from 
inadvertant spilling of dirt during patient care - but tables were provided in 
the hall so that plants could be placed at the windows of each patient's room.