The Facilities Guidelines Institute has released an important new whitepaper, “Design of Behavioral Health Crisis Units,” available at https://fgiguidelines.org/resource/design-of-behavioral-health-crisis-units/. As the website at which the whitepaper is provided explains, “This white paper supports the minimum requirements for behavioral health crisis units included in the 2022 Hospital and Outpatient Guidelines documents.
Anyone who is familiar with Ulrich’s work in the 1980’s won’t be surprised by a study presented at the 2022 Scientific Forum of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress.
Room, hospital, care ratings affected
Sadek and Willis investigated how the design of oncology centers influences patient experiences by interviewing patients and former patients. During the course of their research they “examine[d] key aspects of built environment that shape the experience of patients undergoing intravenous anti-cancer treatment within outpatient settings. . . . four themes highlighting the main contributions of contemporary healthcare design to patients’ experiences were synthesized.
User group specific priorities
The Center for Health Design is making an interactive diagram available that can be used to develop behavioral and mental health environments. It is available free of charge at https://www.healthdesign.org/tools/interactive-design-diagrams/inpatient-rooms/behavioral-mental-health-room As the linked to website indicates, “Two goals are often at the center of current care models for behavioral and mental health: safety and healing.
Grant and colleagues investigated falls in care homes by elderly (mean age 81 +/- 12 years old) residents. They report that some test locations “had solid-state lighting installed throughout the facility that changed in intensity and spectrum to increase short-wavelength (blue light) exposure during the day (6 am–6 pm) and decrease it overnight (6 pm–6 am). The control sites retained standard lighting with no change in intensity or spectrum throughout the day. The number of falls aggregated from medical records were assessed over an approximately 24-month interval. . .
Sleep is essential for human wellbeing. Design can make it easier for humans to drift gently off into healthy sleep—and to stay asleep—whether they’re at home, at a hotel, in a hospital bed, or trying to take a nap break at work.
Qi, Lu, and Chen’s research confirms the wayfinding-related findings of previous studies; being able to see the outdoors as we walk inside a building helps us keep track of where we are and find our way to a desired location. They report that “General hospitals in China always present significant wayfinding problems due to their sizes and complexity. Poor wayfinding often leads to a frustrating and stressful user experience. . . . We conducted an experiment in which 117 college students, aged 18–33 . . . performed two tasks in virtual reality environments of outpatient clinics. . . .
Devlin’s study was conducted in doctor’s office waiting rooms but its findings can reasonably be extended to other sorts of places. Devlin reports that she studied “preference for five different seating arrangements (e.g., rows, clusters) in a doctor’s office waiting room . . . and how such choices may have changed over the pandemic (2013 vs. 2021). . . . Data collected in 2013 and 2021 used sketches of five different seating arrangements; people saw just one of these. . . . seating preferences favored end, not middle seats, and chair selections with the chair back to a wall.