Rovinj Hospital Collaborates with American University to Develop Therapeutic Park Project

The George Washington University and the Rovinj Hospital for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation ‘Prim. Dr. Martin Horvat’ have established a collaboration to prepare a joint project – a hospital therapeutic park that, with its content and landscape architecture, as a pleasant place for socializing and rehabilitation, should “lift” patients out of bed, but also attract local residents to spend more time in nature.

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Last week, a workshop was held at the hospital where 25 students from that American University and five Croatian students, led by landscape architect and professor Daniel Winterbottom and his assistant Luka Jelušić, developed the concept of the future therapeutic park as part of practical field teaching in Rovinj.

– The goal is for the new therapeutic park to “lift patients out of bed” with its ambiance and multifunctional content, but also to attract people from the city to nature, encouraging them to take walks, relax, and simply enjoy the landscape, or to motivate them to actively use physical therapy facilities outdoors. It has been proven that professionally designed therapeutic gardens have multiple positive effects in terms of citizen well-being, especially regarding faster recovery of patients and a positive perception of the hospital as a place where patients come because they want to, not just because they have to, said the hospital director Marinko Rade on this occasion.

This is a modern concept of a hospital, which is no longer an isolated medical institution intended solely for the sick, but part of the broader panorama of the city, a pleasant modern environment for patients’ stay and staff work. The modern design will include, among other things, indoor and outdoor vertical gardens, and one of the novelties will be the possibility for patients to engage in gardening themselves, if they wish, as part of occupational therapy during their stay in the hospital.

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– It is particularly gratifying that we have managed to include students from Croatia and physiotherapists employed in our institution, for whom this type of collaboration and practical faculty teaching with the ‘design and execute’ concept is new. It is interesting to see how foreign universities think in business terms, as students learn by developing concrete solutions and then gain practical experience in execution. We have until next year to align the financial structure, after which the execution will begin. Along with Rovinj Hospital, the Istria County, as the owner and founder of the Hospital, will also invest in the park’s development, said Rade.