It seems most hospitals have that particular shade of light ‘hospital green’ or blue. Is there are a medical or scientific reason these colours are chosen?
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I read that the green is less shocking when it has blood on it. Not sure I’m how true that is.
They’re both colours of nature. The skies and oceans are blue; the lands are green – it appeals to our natural instincts. The decor of hospitals are typically designed to calm people down and reduce anxiety.
The gowns however, depend on the hospital / country you are in. For example, where I am, Red means surgical, Green is Pharmacist, Light Blue is an Assistant, Blue means Nurse, Dark Blue is a Ward Manager, and Black is the Hospital Manager. But here, blue is the colour of the NHS.
Originally green was chosen (instead of the previously used bright white) to reduce glare in the operating room. It can be distracting and very fatiguing to the eyes when there many bright things in your peripheral vision while you’re trying to focus on the precision work you’re doing in a dark hole in someone’s body. You generally want the area you’re focused on to be the brightest thing in your vision (humans are hardwired to look at bright objects), and the insides of humans are generally kinda dark. For this purpose, neutral 18% grey would probably be best, but some might find that dull and depressing.
[This article](https://bcmj.org/blog/green-most-suitable-color-hospital-textiles) talks about colour choice from a few theoretical perspectives.
[This page](https://www.bfwinc.com/surgery-lighting-guide/) talks about some practicalities of lighting, and has a nice (if dated) photo of an operating room that I wish I had the chance to work in (neutral non-bright surfaces).
[This research paper](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1477153520903355) studied the impact of operating room lighting brightness and found a benefit (decreased fatigue and possibly improved patient safety) with different levels of light for specific areas of the OR (basically brightest on the operating table, less bright around the table, and less bright still everywhere else). Though not assessed by this study, the colour and reflectivity of the OR environment could contribute or impact these findings.
FYI though, thats an old school surgeon thing, not for all hospital staff. Modern hospitals typically now choose either a color that seems calming or something that matches their theme colors or logo. Colors are often also chosen to represent what job they have. Like i worked in a hospital where the logo was navy blue, so attendings wore navy blue, but residents wore burgundy, pca’s wore ceil blue, PAs wore teal, and so on. I also worked for a hospital whose logo was purple and white, so thats what the nurses wore. I cant speak for history, but at this point in time its mostly arbitrary.
Look at something red for a while, e.g. a red cup or a red plate, or a bright red circle on your phone (after a google image search). Afterwards, look at a pure white paper. If you looked at the red object for long enough, you’ll now see a green blob in the shape of the red object on the white paper, a kind of after-image. The shape is green, because that’s the complementary color to red (which is related to the three types of color cones in our eyes, but I won’t go too deep into that now).
Now imagine that a surgeon has been staring intently at a blood-red part of the patient’s body while operating and that everyone was wearing white clothes. The moment the surgeon looks towards any of the white clothes, they’ll start seeing green patches everywhere, which is very annoying at best and disorienting at worst. When everyone is wearing green clothes, this effect is not noticeable any more, since the clothes are just as green as the after-image. This is why ‘hospital green’ is chosen in operating rooms or other contexts where doctors routinely deal with red, open wounds.
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