Can’t we design a better HOSPITAL ROOM?
Submitted by GlimmerGuy on 08/22/2009 – 6:02 pm9 Comments
If you think about it, hospital rooms ought to have been redesigned a long time ago. When you’re stuck inside one, you can’t help but notice how lousy the experience is. Plus, you’ve got lots of free time to think of some possible improvements. On the other hand, you may also have things to worry about that don’t involve room design.Unless, that is, you happen to be an IDEO designer who has checked into a hospital room strictly for purposes of checking out its design flaws. In Glimmer, I included an anecdote shared by IDEO’s Paul Bennett, who recounted that on one project for a hospital client, some of the firm’s designers actually spent time flat on their backs in hospital beds—so that they could truly see things from the patient point of view. What they mostly saw, of course, was the ceiling. And this led to a Glimmer moment: Why not use the ceiling as a canvas for presenting either useful information or, at very least, something soothing and decorative?
When you actually study and deconstruct an experience in this way, the opportunities for improvement often start to become apparent. When people step back and ask, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’ you discover that, ‘Well, actually, it doesn’t have to be that way—we just assumed it did.’ A good example is the standard two-to-a room design used in most hospitals. Once you break it down and analyze it, this design just doesn’t make sense. Because if the purpose of a hospital room is to help you get better, shared rooms do a lousy job of that.
Recent design research, as reported in The New York Times, has shown that single-patient rooms reduce infections, relieve patient stress, and improve sleep. And that’s not the only room design element that can affect your health: Design researcher Roger Ulrich notes that hospital rooms should be—but often aren’t—designed to allow for maximum natural light (which has been shown to reduce levels of depression). And most rooms could also benefit from better acoustics so that patients can sleep undisturbed, as well as better angled sightlines so that nurses can see into the rooms from the hallway.
Once you start thinking about ways to improve a hospital room, the possibilities seem endless. So let’s put this up for discussion: If you were designing a hospital room, what would you do differently?
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PriestmanGoode has a radical solution to how hospital wards should be designed.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1564151/what-airplanes-can-teach-us-about-hospital-design
http://www.priestmangoode.com/content/uploads/The-Health-Manifesto.pdf
Poor hospital room experience is an issue that I had write about in my blog after I visited a family member recovering from surgery. There are studies that found recovery benefits from simply hanging images of nature on the walls.
My blog post 'Room Without A View is here: http://kapdesign.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/room-without-a-view/
Victoria,
I do agree that retirement homes are a prime area for redesign. I live in Florida and there are quite a number of interesting options on retirement homes. Would you have any suggestions on what would be an ideal retirement home?
Retirement homes really need good designs as well. An emerging industry.
“When you actually study and deconstruct an experience in this way, the opportunities for improvement often start to become apparent. When people step back and ask, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’ you discover that, ‘Well, actually, it doesn’t have to be that way—we just assumed it did.’”
This portion inspired me to write a journal entry. I live my life by this manner of thinking and it’s great to see acknowledgment of its importance.
That’s what I thought about while in the hospital. Even wrote an email to IDEO. I had this little drainage bag coming from the abdominal incision, I know, gross. There is no where to put it while taking a shower. Provide a little hook. Provide soap on a rope. Really difficult to bend down if you drop the soap. Must be a better way to keep IV lines from getting tangled and walking around with bags on that rolling thingy is weird. Do something about hospital gowns. Yucky in every way. That in itself would be huge.
One thing I would like is a hospital where my doctors would discuss with each other about my ailments and medication before prescribing additional medication. We could have a case of these medications interacting with each other. This is called Root Cause Analysis in the Lean Six Sigma Discipline
.-= Daniel Christadoss´s last blog ..Smart City Building using Fun Theory =-.
Need to share an interesting tit bit since my last comment. I believe the patients were asked what would be their choice? It was “A stream of volunteers to visit and socialize”
.-= Daniel Christadoss´s last blog ..Smart Cities – An introduction – IBM, MIT et al =-.
Well if I were sick and confined to a hospital I would love a big screen TV where I could surf the web with a remote and post Tweets on Twitter with voice commands, check facebook and see what my friends are posting. Order health foods from a designer menu. In short I would like to think I am on a vacation. I should be able to look at my health charts, monitor my condition, consult knowledge bases to see how the medication prescribed by my doctor corresponds with similar diagnosis by other doctors. I would love for all rooms to be different and colorful with paintings by other patients, nurses who can talk philosophy and appreciate art, hobby rooms to paint art. I am sure many hospital rooms may even have these material comforts. A stream of volunteers to visit and socialize.