HCD Guest Author

HCD Guest Author's Latest Posts

Asking The Right Questions

So much of our days are spent problem-solving. From the large to the small, we jump from challenge to challenge, looking for unique, creative, and innovative solutions to the issue at hand. Problem-solving involves critical thinking, analytical skills, and creativity, all in equal measure.

What Corporate America Can Teach Healthcare About Staff Satisfaction

As healthcare continues to move toward being a consumer-based service, focus has appropriately been placed on the experience and satisfaction of patients and families. To achieve positive results, healthcare has borrowed many ideas from retail and hospitality.

But what about the staff? Who is caring for the caregivers? Can these same principles apply to their satisfaction? There’s much that healthcare can learn from companies like Google, Microsoft, Virgin Atlantic, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Listen Up: Design Strategies To Quiet Healthcare Environments

If you stand in the hallway of a hospital unit, what do you hear?

On any given day, most facilities’ floors are filled with an array of noises caused by paging, code alerts, medical equipment, footsteps, and conversations. Yet there’s an increased awareness that such sounds, if left unchecked, can be harmful to the health of patients, staff, and healthcare organizations.

What Sports Medicine And Academic Medical Centers Have In Common

The August issue of Healthcare Design includes sizable features on sports medicine and academic medical centers (AMCs). It seemed like a strange pairing to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Do these facilities have anything in common? You bet they do.
 
Many sports medicine programs are taking what had been a siloed service, typically just orthopedics and maybe rehab, and embracing nutrition, research, psychology, and even technology and industry (with devices such as Fitbit and other innovations).

Trust Me; It’s Research

“I think I read that.”

“I heard it somewhere.”

“I’ll report back to you.”

You may be hearing—or saying—statements like these a lot in current political discussions, but I want to talk about it in the context of evidence-based design (EBD), where we can also run across blanket statements with unclear origins. Let’s take a look at each of these justifications through the lens of EBD:

Building Health At Home

Home design may not be the purview of healthcare architects, but as a nexus in a spectrum of spaces that contribute to health and well-being we should start paying more attention to where and how people live, especially as healthcare broadens its focus from treating sickness and disease to whole-body health.

Union Village: Conditions Of Satisfaction

In any project, conditions of satisfaction are a critical component of the contract because they provide an unchanging definition of success. When a project lacks this, the contract can mean different things to different people, or even different things to the same person at a different time.

One common definition provides the entire project team with a goal and informs design decisions early on in the process.

Think Tank Explores Innovations in Rural Healthcare Environments

Large segments of the population throughout the Great Plains and agricultural Midwest are facing a crisis in maintaining, upgrading, and replacing aging healthcare facilities. Most rural hospitals, which were built during the post-World War II period under the Hill-Burton Act, have reached the end of their useful lives. Meanwhile, the increasing elderly population keeps adding pressure to the existing healthcare system.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark

Evidence-based design has taught us a lot about the importance of lighting, particularly daylighting, in the healing process. Faster recovery times, less pain, and a general sense of well-being have been connected with patient access to daylight.

Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series
Strategy & Planning Series