hospital building design

Hospital Design: An Opportunity to Make Your Patients Feel Better

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According to several research, it turned out that an uncomfortable environment not only discourages a person from a speedy recovery but, also reduces the quality of therapy. And hence, modern architects see the hospital as a “healing machine.”

Hospital Building Design

Hospitals today are uniquely structured buildings with a long overall lifespan, but certain rooms have very short lifetimes. Unlike commercial or educational facilities, hospitals can be used routinely for 50 years or more.

But, deciding on a perfect Hospital Building Plan brings a great sense of responsibility and difficulty to the hospital managers.

To provide the well-being and positive support people need, the hospital must have clear and intuitive wayfinding facilities and an easy-to-understand layout.

In the quest to create safer patient environments, the patient room is a priority. It is necessary to carefully consider the location of the proposed design solutions.

Patient rooms are places where patients spend most of their time and interact with their families and caregivers. However, there is no particular design that suits every hospital and its patient rooms.

Every Hospital Building Design is affected by the stages it goes through, the technology it uses, and the degree of family involvement ininpatient care. Some information is supported by research, while others are based on observation and opinions.

In line with these pathways, patient-centered patient rooms, which are in close communication with the family, emerged.

Hospitals are now complex structures where many disciplines work together and many arguments are evaluated in their construction, instead of big store types with old-style departmental organizations.

Designers are concerned about not making the users feel that they are in a complex structure by bringing as much life into the hospitals as possible with their new approach ideas.

Health spaces planned by Hospital Space Planners with interdisciplinary work; In addition to patient care units, offers features that facilitate the provision of services equipped with digital technologies, with botanical gardens, conference halls, sports facilities, hotel facilities for patients and their relatives.

Today, health architecture develops with design approaches that show the feature of healing the patient without disturbing the natural flow of his own life, with spaces realized through interdisciplinary work, designs that use healthy materials in terms of accessibility and sustainability and use technology effectively.

In healthcare architecture, the hospital is not a fixed design, it is a planning approach that can be applied in different places and in different dimensions.

The key to flexible and extensible hospital planning is to accept the hospital as an open system that can grow on its own scale, without each element disrupting the others and changing the efficiency of the overall hospital.

Only this systematic thinking will enable the hospital to adapt to changing business situations in terms of services’ needs and methods of addressing unexpected market changes. The aim of hospital space planners of Astron Healthcare is to prepare a plan that makes the hospital a flexible and expandable facility that can continuously measure people’s needs clearly and unequivocally, although it may undergo some changes during its long lifetime.

Hospital Room Design Strategies To Increase Staff Efficiency and Effectiveness

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The design of the hospital has a significant impact on patient care and recovery outcomes. Patient with extreme health condition relies on the staff to check in them frequently and ensure a full recovery. But staff can only treat the patient effectively when they have an easy excess of equipment and medical supplies. Therefore, the hospital building design and architecture is very important to improve the efficiency of work in hospitals.

How Architects Can Overcome The Challenges of Hospital Room Design

While designing the hospital room, one of the key challenge that architecture face is the need to accommodate three unique functions in the space.The room must be comfortable and calming for the patient. Second, the caregivers have the access to navigate the space quickly and efficiently. And the third and final thing is a separate area for the patient family and the visitors where they can sit or sleep comfortably without any disruption.

For a small size hospital, designing rooms could be a serious challenge because of the limited space. Another big challenge is providing clear lines of sight from the nurses’ station. Thus, to create an efficient hospital room’s design, there is a requirement of adding an extra layer of intricacy to the design process, because every patient has different needs.

Efficient Hospital Room Design 

To plan and design the most efficient hospital room design strategy, architects thoroughly research staff and patient needs in advance.With the help of Astron professionally managed consultancy you can design the hospitals and their room design efficiently. From examining hospital given data and following evidence-based design principles, Astron consultant has progressed strategies for hospital room designs that can assist staff to perform their daily tasks more smoothly while allowing for great patient and family experiences in the hospital. 

Conclusion

The environment of the hospital and its rooms should feel safe where patients feel well cared for and staff can easily assist them without any hassle. Therefore, the design detail not only enhances staff workflow but also promotes patient recovery rates and leads to higher patient comfort.As a result, this will increase patient experience which means increased revenue at your facility.

5 Best Practices for Patient Safety

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hospital building design

Every year in India, thousands of patients die due to avoidable hospital errors and lack of safety measure. Safety in hospital building design can improve team performance and avoid errors by limiting harm and reducing the likeliness of mistakes.

Here is the list of 5 factors that top health organisations implement to achieve the safety goal for patients.

1. Restraint infection spread 

The practice of washing and sanitise hands before contacting patients is a good practice to restrict the transfer of virus and bacteria. According to the health care association data, infections are the most common serious hospital complication that causes some serious health issue to patients.

Thus, healthcare providers should clean their hands before and after contacting patient contact so that they can protect themselves as well as their patients from infections.

2. Correct Patient Identification 

Recording patients’ correct information confirmed that he/she receives the service or procedure can prevent various harmful events like administering the wrong medication or blood product to a patient. Thus, the patient information should be collected accurately.

3. Use Medicine Carefully

The availability of the enormous number of prescription drugs in the market can cause medical errors in any medical facilities and cause some serious consequences. To avoid such errors, label all the drugs and syringes carefully.

While labelling the drugs, make sure that any medicine doesn’t conflict with the current ones. Also, take some extra precautions with the patient on the blood thinner.

4. Customise hospital discharges 

Customising easy to follow plans for patients like medication routine, the record of essential medicines and data of patients before discharge. Such steps before discharging patient can reduce the potentially preventable readmissions up to 30 per cent. 

5. Avoid surgical mistakes  

Under the pressure of operation, the operating room can become a chaotic environment if there is a miscommunication during the procedure. Plus, physical fatigue and other negligence can put disaster for patients in the operating room.

Whatever the cause of mistakes, it can leave patients with serious injuries that he/she may deal with for the rest of their life. Using the periodic timeouts strategy is a great way to avoid these mistakes. 

The timeout break gives enough time to surgeons to revise their operating procedures and allow staff to consider all pieces of equipment.

Current Trends In Hospital Architecture

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The buildings and the physical infrastructure that support the Hospitals must have the capacity for adaptability, growth and transformation, due to the changing technological advances in health.

They also have to support the new models of operation and administration of Hospitals, the flow of personnel and information, as well as the current and future needs of patients, doctors and visitors.

hospital-designers-planners

The hospital designers & planners in the selection of a Hospital are highly trained adults and professionals, who mostly belong to the “millennial generation”, and as such are users of all kinds of technologies that help them to make decisions the most part of the time.

Here are some important milestones to take into account for the development of hospital projects, based on the experience and trends of the experts:

The structure must go according to the design, function and aesthetics of the concept to which we add factors of architectural language, interior design and environmental certifications.

With current demands, buildings cannot remain static and the structure must help us to have multifunctional spaces, and that it evolve according to its operation and needs.

The design must be committed to the environment and the impact on it; that is why the project must adhere to national and international guidelines for certification, orientation and definition, depending on the type of project, whether it is a new construction, remodeling or operation.

Health infrastructure is today one of the most complex challenges for a project design and structuring team; by itself, the hospital building is the most difficult to design due to the complexity of the technologies that are integrated, and the expectations of patients and families, which combined with those of healthcare processes, are the input to design a healthcare environment.

The perfect balance between structure and nature is one of the great challenges for designers, it requires exquisite style, respect for nature and the site of the project. Landscaping must provide comfort and at the same time respect the care and infection control processes.

Hand washing is the most basic and important step in hygiene protocols, so it is the responsibility of the hospital architect to implement a design where the sinks are perfectly located, with the necessary accessibility and visibility for healthcare and medical personnel.

The healthcare architecture firms in India comply with current national and international regulations and prioritize minimizing the travel of personnel in operation, reducing times and movements in favor of efficiency, simplifying and differentiating access to emergencies.

Of the architectural spaces that are useful today, and were not considered in Hospitals from before 2000, we could state:

  • Comprehensive work areas: close to services and equipped with computer stations, projectors, etc. for discussion of cases between doctors, nursing, technicians, social workers, etc.
  • Community gardens: spaces for interaction between doctors, patients and the community.
  • Community areas: flexible places with amenities for outdoor activities and interaction with alternative health care specialists.
  • Hospitality management: coordination of care for the patient’s family member as well as visitors.
  • E-Kiosks: information kiosks to provide general information to patients and families.

Healthcare Construction: How To Organize Reception Areas For Hospitals And Clinics?

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Reception and waiting areas in health facilities such as hospitals: functions and design indications for the organization of spaces. In the hospitals, healthcare facilities, receptions and waiting areas, in general perform particular function.

Let’s see with which building health criteria to design them.

healthcare-deign-and-planning

Lobby

The lobby is a highly representative space in a healthcare facility. It often serves as a point of contact between the hospital building and the user. It helps to sort the flow of people within healthcare facility premises. The pace houses a series of basic elements like refreshment points, toilets, commercial space etc. But above all of this, it also has a reception and information station.

In particular, the space dedicated to the reception must be identifiable and easily recognizable, it can, therefore, it should be designed by using particular lighting, or colours, materials, and shapes that will make it look distinctive.

From this location, it is important that the accesses to the main routes are easily identifiable, both to allow easier orientation for users and to allow staff to control.

The reception area is well placed in the immediate vicinity of the information desk. This space must be well integrated with the administration offices and also with the waiting areas. It is underlined that it is important to guarantee privacy to patients, who must, therefore, find separate and welcoming environments.

Connective spaces

Through the connective spaces, paths, landings, waiting areas of the elevators, the patient and the visitor enter and move in the structure of the building. The connective, therefore, represents the spaces of directionality and sorting.

Certainly, it is necessary to give orientation and order requirements, but it is also essential to connote these areas in order to communicate domesticity and humanization of the spaces, to promote a good psychological impact.

In the healthcare deign and planning, it will, therefore, be necessary to ensure that the user can find information boards in these areas, seats also with low tables to encourage rest and benches, conversation, green elements and planters, openings to the outside, spaces and elements for communication, a series of furnishing elements and specific finishes suitable for the functions of the spaces.

The excessive uniformity and monotony of long hospital journeys can be mitigated by designing different elements that introduce variations and stimulate attention. All, of course, respecting the minimum passage dimensions.

Waiting areas

In day hospital facilities, waiting areas are often derived from variations and extro-flexions along the connective pathways. In order not to obstruct the flow along the paths, these areas must be separated while maintaining visual contact with the space dedicated to the paths.

When designing parking areas- in the atrium, corridors, joints – and waiting areas – for example in reception areas and for clinics – it is recommended to maintain design unity throughout the hospital.