Thursday, March 8, 2007
Gregory Thomas knows that hospital rooms can be uncomfortable.
“When you’re sick, you don’t specifically want to see the containers with the bio-hazard symbols,” said Thomas, chair of design at the University of Kansas and a cancer survivor.
Thomas, whose 87-year-old father spent time in a hospital in November recovering from a severe reaction to medication, reflected on his recent experiences with hospitals and decided he wanted to help healthcare facilities serve patients better. He came up with Design for Wellness, a consortium of University professors of design, architecture and associated disciplines.
pullquote
From a patient’s standpoint you want to be in an environment where you don’t want to be reminded that you’re sick.
- Gregory Thomas, chair of design at the University of Kansas and a cancer survivor
Thomas said the purpose of Design for Wellness was to make the workspaces and equipment used in Kansas healthcare facilities more safe, effective, efficient and satisfactory for those who used them.
He said that better healthcare designs should take into account what patients see, hear, smell and touch. For example, designing quieter and less conspicuous dental tools could make a trip to the dentist less frightening. He said better design could be as easy as putting a window in a patient’s room and planting a tree.
“From a patient’s standpoint you want to be in an environment where you don’t want to be reminded that you’re sick,” Thomas said.
Mahbub Rashid, associate professor of design and Design for Wellness collaborator, said layout had a significant impact on how people behaved in their environment.
He said one reason the United States was experiencing a shortage of nurses was because the average nurse walked 11 miles each day, which contributed to on-the-job stress. Rashid suggested that designing more centralized nursing stations could help.
“You don’t have to be technologically savvy to do these things,” Rashid said.
Two other Design for Wellness collaborators, Richard Branham, professor of design, and Kent Spreckelmeyer, professor of architecture and urban design, have put their students to work to design better hospital rooms.
The professors are teaching a class that has students designing a model emergency room with moveable walls, furniture and tools. On Tuesday and Wednesday, students took the model room to North Kansas City Hospital to see how hospital staff would use the space.
Hannah Fiechtner, Sioux Falls, S.D., senior in design, said the room would help her design class see how to create more effective and efficient emergency rooms.
“We basically built a huge experiment that people can go inside of,” Fiechtner said.
Lauren Daly, Olathe senior in design, said because hospital staff constantly washed their hands, the model could help decide the best place for a sink. She said the placement of things inside a hospital room was important, especially in life or death situations.
“This is just research to find out what can be improved and putting it out there so others can make those improvements,” Daly said.
Kansan staff writer Nathan Gill can be contacted at ngill@kansan.com.
— Edited by Mark Vierthaler
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