Healthcare Design - December 2020 - 31

BREAKOUT SESSION

USING DATA TO DESIGN BETTER STAFF
ENVIRONMENTS
WHILE TODAY'S healthcare industry is looking for

innovations to improve restorative environments
for staff to combat burnout and improve well-being, there's a huge gap in the literature for strong
evidence and design guidelines for these areas in
healthcare facilities, said Adeleh Nejati, healthcare
planner and researcher at HMC Architects, during
the HCD Virtual session " Design of Staff Restorative
Environments: A Replicated Research on Places of
Adeleh Nejati
Respite. " Furthermore, she added, " Healthier and
more satisﬁed nurses can provide higher quality of
care that translates to higher patient satisfaction. "
In 2015, Nejati looked at the issue as part of her
PhD dissertation on restorative design features for
hospital staff break areas, conducting a survey with
medical-surgical nurses. Fast forward to 2020, and
she replicated the study with nurse leaders to compare the research ﬁndings. During the session, NeLinda Knodel
jati, along with copresenters Erin Clark, healthcare
operations specialist at ClarkRN, and Linda Knodel,
national nursing strategy and leadership at Kaiser
Permanente, shared some of those ﬁndings:
* Contemporary clinical practice is challenging
and complex, resulting in stress from responding to
that reality. On a scale of 0-10 (with 0 being low), 68
percent of medical-surgical nurses rated their level
of stress 7 or higher and 64 percent of nurse leaders
Erin Clark
rated their level of stress 7 or higher. " The result is
comparable between the two groups, with slightly more bedside nurses being highly stressed, " Nejati said.
* Looking at activities aimed to relieve stress, medical-surgical nurses preferred taking a break, talking, and having lunch, while nurse leaders had
more responses regarding going outside and taking a walk, Nejati said. " We
can explain this difference in a sense that bedside nurses are mostly tied to
their patients, so opportunities for them to go outside and to take a walk are
very limited, " she said. " The question is, how could we make these opportunities more accessible for them? "
* For both groups, the level of dissatisfaction with the staff break room in the
unit was much higher compared to their level of dissatisfaction with the facility cafeteria or garden. Nejati said there could be several reasons for this.
" First, we usually design better public spaces within a facility than a staff
break room in the unit. Second, nurses use their break room in the unit every day and they hardly go to the cafeteria or garden during their break to
have a better understanding of the amenities that can correlate with a high
level of satisfaction, " she said.
In closing, Clark stressed the importance for this research. " Our goal is to
collect data that will assist designers when working with organizations and to
present new ways to think about these spaces, " she said.-TW

31

BREAKOUT SESSION

TIPS TO MASTER
ACOUSTICS
A PANEL OF industry experts at HCD Virtual discussed strategies to impact acoustics, during the
session " Sensory Design: Mastering Acoustics
in Healthcare Environments. " John Czarnecki,
deputy director and senior vice president at
IIDA, moderated the discussion with Amy Mays,
interior design practice leader at HDR; Ana PintoAlexander, director of health interiors and principal at HKS; and Jo Solet, assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Mays said planning and materiality are big
drivers in trying to achieve a balance in acoustics
and that solutions should be considered in a
layered approach. For example, placing an
ice maker in an offstage area rather than in an
onstage area not only helps control use but also
keeps noise away from the patient. Regarding
materials, many of the nonporous materials and
wall protection that are required in healthcare environments to support infection control measures
can have a negative effect on acoustics because
they don't have sound absorption attributes,
Pinto-Alexander said.
Specifying products like
rubber flooring or ceiling
tiles with the highest noise
reduction coefficient
available can help address these issues, while
architectural solutions
include angling or curving
Amy Mays
walls or bulkheads to
diffuse reverberation, she
added.
Another design strategy
is having the right balance
of " background " sound,
as complete quiet makes
voices more audible and
limits speech privacy.
Ana Pinto-Alexander
" Including attention to
acoustics in the healthcare
environment enhances
patient sleep, contributing
to faster recovery and
shorter length of stay, and
protects speech privacy, "
Solet said.-TW
Jo Solet

DECEMBER 2020

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Healthcare Design - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - December 2020
