Healthcare Environments: Designing Solutions that Work

In the last two years, we’ve seen unprecedented demand on our healthcare system, which has strained physical resources, the designs of institutions, and the wellbeing of the amazing health workers navigating them. Hospitals, clinics, and their staff were charged with reimagining spaces to accommodate inpatient surges, regular emergency care, and evolving pandemic imperatives, while still working toward the goal of helping patients return to wellness. The concept of creating “healing environments” through intelligent hospital furniture design is a smart investment in the future of healthcare for a number of reasons, including shorter hospital stays for patients, increased safety and efficiency for staff, and improved interactions between the two. How are healing environments so essential to modern medicine?

Excellence in Patient Care

Healthcare design today is largely driven by the concept of adaptability, because healthcare itself is a rapidly evolving field. To maintain excellent patient-focused medicine, changing needs must be considered: 

• Infection prevention is more essential than ever and can be encouraged using durable partitioning materials that are designed to withstand regular sterilization.
• Increasing isolation room capacity using flexible wall configurations can keep confirmed contagions from circulating through the general population.
• Anticipating changes in patient populations and demand means spaces can serve different roles, like triage, the transformation of surgical-medical rooms into intensive care units using sliding glass doors, and ergonomic telehealth stations with controlled acoustics for privacy.

Meeting the needs of patients also means anticipating rapid changes in their conditions and the facility’s capacity to meet them. Multi-functional, modular furnishings and structures like maars Living Walls partitions are solutions superior to permanently fixed pieces in maintaining adaptability in hospitals and clinics.

Patient Comfort for Wellness

In recent decades, hundreds of studies have emerged expounding the physical effects of the environment on patient recovery, as it plays an important role in holistic treatment. “Healing Environments” are also essential for the wellness of their families and care staff, who are directly responsible for supporting them. Smart hospital furniture design reduces incidence of falls and infections, and improvements in patient privacy and comfort through beautifully applied elements can actually lead to shorter hospital stays and faster recoveries. Patient rooms designed to evolve around them as their conditions improve allow staff to remain familiar with the workflow of their patients’ surroundings, reducing errors and stress.

Design Solutions Support Healthcare Providers’ Best

Successful patient care is only possible through the dedication and expertise of well-supported caregivers, and intelligently designed spaces will impact their ability to maintain excellent clinical performance. Organized, meaningful modifications translate into improved patient outcomes and efficient, collaborative care:

• Flexible work spaces can be adapted to evolving recommendations for improving their safety.
• Improved ergonomics keep caregivers’ bodies in alignment, reducing physical stress and fatigue.
• Clean, streamlined aesthetics maintain a low stress environment important for managing mental health.
• Modular, hybrid solutions for charting allow for room-adjacent or centralized stations, improving workflow.
• Essential areas for decompression create neutral zones for staff to share information, seek support, and interact socially to destress and rest.

While innovative workflow solutions can be introduced to address and overcome challenges, improving staff efficiency is best served through team-based, hospital-wide efforts. Company-wide collaboration requires a strong corporate culture, development of which is essential through thoughtful design that represents and supports the mission of the group.

Healthcare Environments are About Much More than Design

As we move into a new era of design that manages the wellness of our global family, an eye to the future seemingly guides us to reflect on the past. As early as 400 BCE, Hippocrates defined health as not just the absence of illness, but as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, accomplished through holistic treatment. Thoughtful and comprehensive hospital furniture design with the help of the team at Working Spaces can change the lives of your patients, maintain and evolve the supportive corporate cultures of their caregivers, and prepare your facility today for the challenges of tomorrow. Contact us today to transform your capacity for quality care!