Rediscovering the art of healing connection by creating the tree of life poster: A pilot program for hospitalized older adults

The goal of this project was to provide a way for hospital staff to form meaningful therapeutic relationships with patients in the fast-paced hospital environment. Watson's Theory of Human Caring was the framework guiding the project. The Lifestory intervention was a Tree of Life poster depicting sources of encouragement and enjoyment, special memories, life lessons, family, and roots. Preintervention and postintervention measures included quality of life (QOL) and spirituality scales with established psychometrics. A one-sample t test was used to analyze data. Mean age of participants (n = 15) was 73.8. Ten (67%) patients reported the intervention positively affected their QOL. Improvements were noted in overall QOL (p = 0.05), as well as emotional (p = 0.005), physical (p = 0.02,) and spiritual well-being, as measured by the Expanded Version of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being Scale (p = 0.02). This simple Lifestory intervention was feasible and associated with improvement in several QOL dimensions in hospitalized older adults.