Art has taken on many forms and functions in healthcare design. When used effectively, art has a profound potential to change how patients, visitors, and staff perceive, interpret, and react to the spaces around them.
We already know through evidence-based design studies that art can have a positive impact on patient outcomes. Empirical data shows that, physiologically, patients respond positively to specific types of art. That data has informed the design of many recent projects.
The surgical team at the University of California, San Diego’s (UCSD) Thornton Hospital is doing inspiring things in medicine, such as awake brain surgery for maximal resection of brain tumors near functional areas of the brain, minimally invasive computer-guided surgery for ENT, neurosurgery, and spine surgery applications. A common theme in many of these procedures is the need for real-time imaging to confirm successful execution of a procedure.
There’s just something in the air today. Sure, it may be the mild temperature here in Cleveland or that we’ve finally reached the mid-point of the week that’s injecting a spring into everyone’s step. But I’m willing to go out on a limb—I’m willing to say it just may be the spirit of Leap Day.
Whenever I talk to firms or facility owners about projects they’re working on, I always enjoy asking whether mock-ups were used in the design process.
More so, I’m interested to hear whether the pendulum is swinging toward physical or virtual mock-ups. I tend to find that while both are often used, industry experts tend to prefer one over the other—and, from there, it just depends on the individual.
Since the early 1980s, Legacy Community Health Services has been a piece of the Houston landscape, where it was started in an effort to offer locals a place to go for anonymous STD screenings and treatment. Today, it serves more than 40,000 patients a year, providing comprehensive primary health services as a Federally Qualified Health Center.
Some within the die hard, workaholic baby boomer crowd who have long sneered at the idea of a “work-life” balance may have thought (or hoped) that a persistent recession would lower the expectations of those in Generation X or Generation Y (also known as Millennials) for a well-rounded lifestyle.
Would the economic downturn force a paradigm shift with these idealistic generations? Will they now have to face the reality that to survive and get ahead you must be fanatically focused on being work-centered and making the appropriate sacrifices in your personal life?
Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute is the cornerstone of “The New Saint Luke’s,” a reinvention of the more than 125-year-old Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Missouri, that updates the campus for the new century.
February 19-25 marks the annual celebration of Engineers Week, the signature program of the National Engineers Week Foundation. It celebrates the positive contributions engineers make to our society (and I have a feeling we all know a few who have done so within our healthcare community) and provides outreach programs for children and adults interested in the field.
Mark Repenshek, PhD, is the healthcare ethicist for Columbia St. Mary’s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He also chairs the facility’s green team and represents Columbia St. Mary’s on Ascension Health’s green team. He felt a career in healthcare and ethics was the perfect intersection of exploring life’s big questions around faith, morality, ethics, and health.
Agree with it or not, Cleveland Clinic is doing something pretty interesting with the design of its recent facilities.
Looking more like an art museum than a traditional healthcare setting, yesterday I saw firsthand how white walls, floors, ceilings, and, yes, even furniture, create an environment that goes against what many support as the proven best methods of healthcare design.
Those who know me know that I’m an optimist by nature. I see most challenges as opportunities. Without a doubt, most of us in this industry have had more than our fair share of “opportunities” these past few years navigating through this economy and the new world order.
