Patient room handedness in an impatient unit facility has been an important design consideration and has always been a subject of debate. Impact of physical design configurations on care processes matters to designers as we constantly try to seek efficiency and reach the best solutions in our designs.
Most of the hospitals adopt the same-handed rooms throughout the inpatient care and they’re considered to be standardized designs in this industry. Does this mean that it’s the right approach? Arguably, there would be two types of errors that would be encountered in Healthcare Design : of built environment, and that of inefficiency of caregivers in this context.
Although there is a need to optimize the environment by designing all the rooms the same, when in turn the burden on staff is reduced, leaving almost no room for error. Additionally, one might claim that standardization of the same handed units might turn out to be cost effective, in the form of prefabricated, modular and pre-manufacturing of components. But the fact is mirrored layouts make it easy to provide for the shared services between two adjacent inpatient rooms, the plumbing and mechanical services – that’s what most architects outside of healthcare architecture practice adapt in their designs. As is not a lot of evidence that supports this argument, it is essential to take a constructive approach to make the right decision.
The big statement here is that there is a difference in behaviors based on the handedness of the caregiver and that cannot be ignored. As Mr.James Bisak, Vice President, Facilities at Sinai Health System on our visit to the Mt. Sinai Hospital, Illinois Medical District rightly points out, there is a lot of interesting literature and research out there about the concept of a same handed v/s mirrored room layout, and which one works better. But the argument is that what if the caregiver is left-handed?
In general, zooming out to the details of the medical and surgical settings – it is essential to have standardized equipment and supplies at the unit level to be located appropriately in order to minimize error.
Based on :
#EVIDENCE- BASED DESIGN #INPATIENT UNITY #MT. SINAI HOSPITAL, #STANDARDIZATION
You brought up a lot of really good design ideas/points in this post. Its crazy how patient rooms are detailed all the way down to the prominent hand of the caregiver. We should really start to note how each hospital we visit orients their patient rooms and the pro's and con's that they are noticing within.