Bedside Manner: Healthcare Environments Focus on Patients, Caregivers, and Guests

From picking the right chair to using specialized keyboards, workplace productivity and ergonomic equipment is a hot topic. Improved productivity and ergonomic design is crucial in every work environment. This is especially true in healthcare environments where staff member errors can lead to catastrophes,

In the past, healthcare design tended to focus on the needs of medical professionals. Today, healthcare facilities and design professionals are beginning to reconsider the total healthcare environment to improve the overall experience for patients. healthcare providers, and guests. "We are adopting a patient-centered design approach, so we try to look at everything from the patient's perspective," says Evan Musheno, planner, facilities management, Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH.

With approximately 3.5 million square feet of healthcare facilities, the Ohio State University Medical Center is a complex of multiple hospitals and off-site clinics. Last fall, the Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital at the Ohio State University Medical Center had 90 patient rooms redesigned. This 5-story, 225,000-square-foot hospital, with its cardiovascular wellness focus, provides services from routine diagnostic treatment to robot-assisted surgical procedures and heart transplants.

Before Ross Hospital's design phase, the medical center interviewed a wide range of medical personnel and facilities professionals to better understand hospital design. The center's customer service department also continually tracks the satisfaction levels of its patients and guests. Next, the hospital built a full-sized mock-up of the new patient room and allowed hospital staff members to review the design and work out the kinks before the construction process began. Continual patient and staff input was an integral part of the modernization.

Ross Hospital's new patient rooms are roughly 50-percent larger than previous patient rooms. Guided by universal design principles, all of the new rooms are private and identical in layout. "This uniform layout made it easier for all of the medical personnel," says Musheno. The rooms also feature private bathrooms and pull-out beds for guests. These amenities greatly improved patients' and visitors' levels of satisfaction. "It is a huge difference from where we had the patients in the past," says Musheno.