Janet Sisolak | radiation treatment | Ambulatory Clinical Building | contemporary artist

That you're cut off from the outside world, and, more specifically, from the outdoors, is a common thread in environmental healing research. If patients can look at nature, even if it's just a landscape painting, their stress is vastly reduced. That's why much of the decor inside M.D. Anderson's Ambulatory Clinical Building imitates nature. Even the massive sculpture in the lobby is a tree - rendered in the vision of a contemporary artist, but a tree nevertheless. Water falls down a grooved granite wall, the light bulbs mimic sunlight, and through the doorway into the cafeteria, you can see a ceiling of puffy "clouds" suspended from a flat blue "sky."

A patient here for radiation treatment would walk between the waterfall and the cafeteria sea, take an elevator down, walk through a waiting room with an aquarium that contains a real coral reef, and then into a room that might seem dominated by huge, scary machinery were it not for the sprawling nature scenes on the wall and above the treatment area. "When you're being treated for cancer, it can be unpleasant," says Dr. Thomas Burke, M.D. Anderson's senior vice president and interim chief operating officer. "We hope to distract people from that." Apparently it works: The backlit art has a direct physical effect, explains Janet Sisolak, who spearheaded the construction project. When patients view it during treatment, "[their] heart rate goes down, so stress decreases."

The oversize waiting areas are also designed to reduce stress, whether through the ubiquitous aquariums and huge windows or through the presence of family. Recliners, tables sized for jigsaw puzzles and games, laptop desks with Internet connections and wireless access - they're all there to encourage loved ones to come and stay. And it's not just for comfort and convenience: Research shows that patients with familial and social support are healthier overall than patients without; for heart patients in particular, family support means quicker recovery. At M.D. Anderson, "we count on an average five-to-one ratio of family members to patients," Sisolak says. "They're really part of the caregiving team."