Sara Bayramzadeh, Ph.D., M.Arch., Associate professor and coordinator of the Elliot program in healthcare design, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University (Kent, Ohio)
Driven by a passion to deliver tangible improvements that will have an impact on the lives of patients and staff, Sara Bayramzadeh balances roles in teaching and research at Kent State University.
As a healthcare design researcher, she advocates for informed design decisions to ensure effective design strategies to improve outcomes and enhance communication between healthcare professionals and clients.
This past year, she concluded research on trauma room design, a project that received $2.4 million in funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Serving as the principal investigator, she partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on the four-year project. This large-scale research focused on addressing understudied issues related to trauma rooms in emergency departments (EDs), which play a critical role in stabilizing patients with traumatic injuries. Notably, traumatic injuries account for 59 percent of deaths in individuals under 44 years old, and unintentional injuries are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.
In addition to providing much-needed insight into the overlooked intersection of architecture and trauma care in EDs, she pioneered innovative research methodologies, including augmented reality and automated trauma room observation in collaboration with a computer scientist. The final product of the research project is a set of research-based design guidelines publicly available to help architects, designers, researchers, educators, and students benefit from the knowledge created.
Additionally, using multiple methodologies such as video analysis of real trauma cases, full-scale mock-ups, and scenario-based simulations, Bayramzadeh and her research team have authored multiple journal articles and delivered conference presentations on the topic in the past year on augmented reality, technology integration in trauma rooms, and sensory stimuli in trauma rooms.
The design guidelines are anticipated to make a positive impact on patient care and staff workflow by helping architects and designers make informed design decisions.
On her nomination, Bayramzadeh shared, “As a researcher, I strive to shed light on understudied areas that have meaningful impacts on real-world design practice. My goal is to bridge the gap between academia and practice by developing research-driven design guidelines.”
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