Healthcare Design - May 2024 - 32

IN F O CUS
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For a recent project with Renown Health for the Renown Regional Medical
Center in Reno, Nev., Perkins&Will turned a small alcove into a shadow
puppet niche, adding silhouettes of native animals and hands showing
how to shape them. With a multicolored light mounted overhead, the
niche is mentally stimulating, playful, and colorful without requiring patients
to touch a surface or move around too much. Another interactive
idea is a themed or decorated reading nook that allows kids to curl up and
feel safe.
Research shows that exposure to nature-inspired visuals can reduce
stress and anxiety in patients as well. Designers can deliver this in a variety
of ways, such as soft curves and organic patterns incorporated into floor
patterns and around nurses' stations. Design teams can also select artwork
for the walls or create custom graphics of local landscapes for high-impact
rigid sheet and glass film. Nature-inspired shapes, such as leaves, can be cut
into solid surfaces or projected onto the ground with lights.
Dynamic and diffuse lighting can also be used to help imitate nature,
such as circadian rhythm lighting that can double as a healing tool to help
regulate newborns in a neonatal intensive care unit or light through a
perforated ceiling mimicking dappled sunshine. For the project in Reno,
patient rooms feature sunset gradients in headwalls and twinkling overhead
lights that are designed to transport children from a hospital to a
campground under the stars at Lake Tahoe. Super-graphic, rigid-sheet
murals on the footwalls include images of turtles, rabbits, and owls that
patients can look for while lying in bed.
This subdued meadow theme is amped up in the corridors with bright
saturated colors, seek-and-find murals with more local animals like foxes
and deer, and custom abstract paintings. Embracing regionalism in this
way, with recognizable creatures (avoiding anything frightening), brings
comfort to children and parents seeking the familiarity of home, while
also sparking their imaginations.
BUILT-IN GAMING AND MUSIC THERAPY
Alongside the positive distraction and imaginative escape provided by
child-oriented visuals, games are also important. Designers can customize
wardrobes to fit a video game console, cutting out vents to prevent equipment
overheating. It is prudent in this case to work with the facility's information
technology department to create a separate secure network
for game play that doesn't overload the hospital's network or potentially
expose it to hackers. Integrating infrastructure for cameras can also serve
a dual purpose-allowing in-room medical teleconferencing between patients
and specialists or patients and family members, as well as interactive
video game play with friends, siblings at home, or other patients in the unit.
Creating a music therapy destination within the hospital can significantly
impact the emotional well-being of children, especially those in the
unit for a long period of time, by lowering blood pressure, reducing heart
rate, relaxing tense muscles, and reducing anxiety and depression. In these
spaces, children can play instruments, record and edit their music in a
sound booth, and see others perform.
Acoustical panels and angled walls help with acoustics in the recording
room. It's also desirable to install the room away from the patient floor, ideally
off a corridor that's wide enough to accommodate multiple children arriving
together, maybe on a special cart, so it feels like a destination.
BALANCING SAFETY AND INFECTION CONTROL
Recognizing that children like to touch, pull, and explore, project teams
also need to ensure their designs prioritize safety within a pediatric unit,
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Healthcare Design - May 2024

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