The Impact of Hospital Design on Patient Care

Healing hospitals focus on patients on a holistic manner. To build this type of care for a healing hospital starts with something as simple as the hospital design. The design of the hospital is very important. Weather there will be a lot of light or not, spacing, and how that space it utilized. “Historically, healthcare

Human factors are a serious reason to approach building design from several different angles. Understanding regulatory requirements will help the planning team meet the different codes required to build or remodel. Color selection and noise control affect the environment for both patients and employees so this must be selected carefully to impact the health and wellness of those who are interacting in the health care space. Purchasing the correct the equipment for the space and the employees to use on a daily basis is imperative to the budget of the facility planning process. Identifying the

This paper will describe current quality outcome measures and the significance for improving medical care. Organizational accountability and transparency has improved with the emergence of Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) programs and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPs). This article will review the role of the nurse manager in creating a culture for quality care as well as the nurse for meeting organizational and patient expectations. Organizations like The Joint Commission (JC), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and The American Nurses Association (ANA) have been critical in establishing standards for quality. This paper will also report on the most recent hospital statistics and steps taken to improve HCAHP scores and reduce readmission rates at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville (UTMCK). Statistics at UTMCK will also be compared to the Tennessee and National averages found on the Medicare website Hospital Compare. The aim of this paper is to explore if healthcare system initiatives are improving quality and enhancing patient outcomes.

Florence Nightingale’s nursing theory is probably the most well known in the nursing profession. “Patients are to be put in the best condition for Nature to act on them. It is the responsibility of nurses to reduce noise, to relieve patients’ anxiety, and to help them sleep” (Theories of Florence Nightingale, 2012). This theory emphasizes that environmental factors and adaptation is the basis of holistic nursing care. This theory is important in my opinion because it ensures that the center of focus is on the patient. When patients are hospitalized making them comfortable in a new and strange environment is important to me. Eliminating noise at the nursing station and turning down the lighting in the hallways at night are just a few ways that nurses can improve the environmental factors surrounding patients. During hospitalizations I strive to eliminate any anxiety that my patient may be experiencing. Upcoming procedures and treatments can cause tremendous stress. Simply by providing sufficient information regarding treatments or procedures can be beneficial in reducing anxiety or

Aiken, L.H., Clarke, S.P., Sloane, D.M., Lake, E.T. & Cheney, T. (2008, May). Effects of hospital care environment on patient mortality and nurse outcomes. Journal of Nursing Administration, 38(5), 223-229.

Healing hospitals require more than just patient care, they require love and compassion with not only a patient but there family as well. A healing physical environment starts with caring for the patients but is also affected by how healthcare staff interacts with families. They believe that by creating a loving, compassionate, and appealing environment it will help the patients and their families get through difficult situations. The three components of a healing hospital are as

Environment. The environment considered in this project is exclusively for the inpatient acute care, where HAPU occurrence has been documented to be the highest. The research focused on this environment as well, and revealed that in

The first component speaks of a healing environment. This is an environment that is restful to the patient and the patient‘s family. There are no overhead paging, no sweepers going down the hall at night, promotion of a calming stress free environment for staff and patients to connect with their internal spirituality. The implementation of something as simple as a relaxation garden or massage treatment can go far in helping a patient rejuvenate so that they can move forward.

When considering this the color of the environment plays a big part of the healing environment. The use of chromotherapy, color healing, is essential when considering a healing environment. Green is considered the universal color for healing (Stefanidakis, 2001). Using colors appropriately in the hospital environment can encourage emotional responses to enhance healing. If the incorrect colors are utilized the patient may present with symptoms of irritability instead of peacefulness or cheerfulness which could inhibit healing. Furthermore, the hospitals interior plays a major role in the healing process. Spirituality will be promoted if the interior reflects the hint of a religious atmosphere such as exercising specific religious artifacts spirituality will be promoted. Hospitals can also incorporate unrestricted visiting, decorative fountains, fireplaces, skylights and healing gardens to help provide a relaxing environment which decreases stress for their customer population.

Hospital noise is more than an annoyance. It disrupts patient sleep, creates spikes in blood pressure, and hinders wound healing and pain management. The post-partum unit at North Fulton Hospital has installed a traffic light device that reinforces awareness of the need for a quieter atmosphere by monitoring the noise level and turning from yellow to red as it rises. Even with this added device, noise consistently gets the worst marks on patient surveys. Noise-reduction efforts really gained momentum recently, when Medicare began basing a portion of hospital reimbursement on quality measurements including patient ratings of the quality of care (Landro, 2013). Additional measures need to be put in place in order to improve quality care by reducing distracting noises. White noise amplified through an intercom or machine will make the typical sounds become less obtrusive or obvious to the patient.

Lastly, a current and new survey that is used as a surveillance method is the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS). The NHCS integrates inpatient data previously collected by the NHDS with the emergency department, outpatient department, and ambulatory surgery center data collected by the NHAMCS. The integration of these two surveys along with the collection of personal identifiers such as protected health information will allow the linking of care provided to the same patient in the different facilities they may have visited as an outpatient or inpatient. “It will also be possible to link the survey data to the National Death Index and Medicaid and Medicare data to obtain a more complete picture of patient care” (CDC,2017).

Some of the important reasons for selecting patient-centered, time, safe, quality of work, and patient satisfaction measurements of quality for the hospital mentioned above, are due to risk of adverse effects that are revealed in clinical settings, which leads to the limitations in standards of medical care for in-patent and emergency treatment (Stelfox & Straus, 2013). For example, the measurements of Safe is variable to the quality

Hospital is carpeted to get rid of the feel and helps in reduce disinfecting smell. The objective is to have friendly environment that will help patient recuperate faster.

The delivery of healthcare has evolved and changed over the years and with the advances in science and technology, the ability to provide safe, quality care to all patients has been impacted by the changes. With the rising healthcare costs and decrease in reimbursement for care provided, organizations must look for ways of cost containment to maintain viability for the future. Fabre (2005) noted that administrators are struggling to maintain financial stability and retain competent nurses during these difficult

One of the main goals of healthcare facilities is to provide the patients with a “healing environment”. The goal of the healing environment is to remove the patient from all the toxic and hazards to give them time to heal. Three concepts that help creating a stable environment will be explain in this paper. These concepts are the seen environment, the unseen environment, and the storied environment.