The Business Meeting Room

Will administrative meeting rooms become a sacred place for your physicians? Even if an important transformation occurs there, few will come to regard the room as a touchstone or a sacred space. In contrast a retreat center promotes reverence for place. You can probably rent a suitable center close to your hospital. You can acquire and convert an adjacent home into a retreat center. Finally, you can build a center. Acquisition and building are more easily justified if the retreat center is also available for the use of hospital employees. Few hospital budgets can fund the purchase of a retreat center, but other funding sources include a hospital foundation grant and interested benefactors.

Programs vs. Place

The place for educational programs is simply an auditorium or conference room with appropriate audiovisual equipment. The more spiritual the program, the more self-revealing physicians are asked to be, the more the chosen place needs to be insulated from clinical activities, including the electronic intrusions of portable communications gear. Program participants can be asked to silence their cell phones and pagers as they would in a concert or theater. A meeting room in a non-clinical area works well for spiritual, self-revealing programs. Often hospital administration offices include a suitable meeting room. It should have minimal hallway traffic, a table, chairs that can be moved, comfortable air handling, and good lighting, preferably with a dimmer switch. Projection equipment, a sound system and a window to the outside are optional but useful.