One would argue that of all the public & private sectors, staff shortage in hospitals is one of the most critical issues. Some are short term due to illness or other personal reasons but permanent shortages are more serious, mainly due to people leaving service at retirement, changing employer or even moving away to another [...]
Visits to a hospital by patients or their visitors are almost always a stressful experience, especially the first visit. This stress can rapidly escalate, if they cannot get to where they need to go, quickly – be it to get treatment or to visit a loved one. The difficulty to find way can be compounded [...]
Author: Wullie Scott All healthcare facilities as part of the hospital design process require some kind of Nurse Call System which includes patient-to-staff and staff-to-staff calls when the need arises. When the nurse call is initiated, it buzzes at the nearest staff base, where the staff responsible can find out from the nurse call panel [...]
Designing an operating theatre outlines the intricacies of the hospital design process. An operating theatre suite consists of the Theatre, the Anaesthetic room, Scrub room and the Dirty Utility (or just Utility) room. We will look at planning just the Operating Theatre itself in this hospital design guide article. The size and room dimensions vary [...]
If you are planning on opening your own new dental surgery, you would have worked in one for a number of years or at least a few months. You would be familiar with the equipment, layout and the quality of cabinetry. Laying out or planning a dental surgery is not a very complex job. There [...]
Planning Pathology labs including microbiology, biochemistry and haematology should be fairly simple and straight forward. But we know from experience that if careful thought is not given at the design and planning stage, the simplest of things can and most probably will go wrong.
In the UK, PFI (Private Finance Initiative) has generated a renewed interest in hospital design arena. It effectively provides us an opportunity to consider the hospitals as Therapeutic Environments. Hospital design managers like me, believe that expert knowledge has encouraged the development of hospitals that provide settings for promoting patient recovery, healing and well being.
Medical equipment planning and layout design are one of the trickiest parts within the hospital design process and as such demand a thorough consideration of all aspects. Each clinical space is woven around how clinicians interact with the equipment and the patients. It takes into account the universal principles of infection control, general hygiene and [...]
When I was young I had to visit the hospital where my father was admitted after a horrific accident. While trying to save a child who suddenly ran across the road, he had a severe road accident. To cut a long story short, my father had to have about 21 operations to repair his broken [...]
What has environment and sustainability got to do with hospital design and construction? In-fact a great deal! Environment and sustainability are not only the 21st century’s new buzz words but have been playing an increasingly bigger and more important role in shaping the world we live in. Businesses are falling over themselves in ranking environment [...]