Follow these three hospital room design tips to bring your facility into a new era of holistic approaches to health and wellness.
Many hospitals are taking new approaches to interior design for patient rooms, lobbies, and exterior spaces. More and more studies are being done to look into the relationships between hospital design, patient outcomes, and clinician performance, and driving theories behind hospital room design are changing as a result. Follow these three hospital room design tips to bring your facility into a new era of holistic approaches to health and wellness.
1. Health and Sanitation are #1
Patient health is paramount when designing hospital facilities. After all, that is what these spaces are designed for! Cutting edge design is all well and good, but administrators must seriously consider what is best for patient health when making decisions about furniture, art, and flooring. Materials used for hospital room furniture must be easy to clean and sanitize, but they must also be comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Luckily, many healthcare furniture manufacturers are moving away from traditional design and are making more ergonomic and modern pieces with the same easy-to-clean materials.
2. Consider the Needs of Patients, Clinicians, and Visitors
Patients, medical professionals, and visitors all have different needs. The key to designing a functional hospital room is to ensure that these needs can be met in a way that allows every party to coexist in the same space. One design strategy is to divide the room mentally into thirds: one third for visitors furthest from the door, one third for medical professionals closest to the door, and one third for patients in the middle. This allows visitors to feel at ease and not like they are interrupting the clinical process. Doctors, nurses, and therapists have the third closest to the door so that they can enter without interrupting for smaller tasks, and they can leave quickly to see to other patients if they must. Patients should have the middle space so that they can interact with both their guests and their clinicians.
3. Multifunctional Spaces and Furniture
Despite changes in design trends for hospitals, administrators are often limited by the same small spaces for hospital rooms. Since private rooms promote healing, designers must often work within these small areas to create a fully-functional yet not-overly-cluttered space. To this end, it is important to create multifunctional spaces within hospital rooms. For visitors especially, sofa beds or recliners can be used as both sitting and sleeping areas. Whiteboards can be put on walls to make use of the space in a way that encourages dialogue and communication during treatment. Movable and transformable desks for patients and clinicians can be adjusted and moved to serve their necessary functions and then be put away or used in another manner. Hospital furniture manufacturers are embracing this new wave of multifunctionality in furniture, and there are many great options available to help you create a hospital room that is optimized for healing.
Choose Edwards & Hill for Your Hospital Furniture and Design Needs
Are you ready to redesign your hospital rooms to further promote healing and wellness? Edwards & Hill can help you design and install the perfect designs for your medical facility. Edwards & Hill is a leading office, education, medical, and hospitality furniture provider with the high-quality design and installation services for any style or scale. If you are ready to get your hospital room design started, contact us online or give us a call at 301-317-4250. For more furniture design tips, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flickr, and YouTube.
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