Child-friendly Hospitals: 3 Ways to Make Them More Welcoming to Kids
Here are three elements to add to your healthcare facility design to make it child-friendly or more welcoming for children. These are architectural elements that help create a more comfortable environment for visitors of hospitals and other related buildings.
SPACE
Richard Lasam
1/14/20262 min read
Hospitals, like I talked about in a previous post, may cause anxiety and general stress by the very nature of the space. It is a place of healing, but also a place where pain and loss will be present. These emotions are felt more strongly and intensely in children and teenagers when they visit healthcare facilities.
From having regular checkups, getting vaccine shots, or waiting in long lines for payment, imaging, pharmacy, and even the elevator, there are many things that can make the hospital a place of discomfort for many kids. As architects, we can design the healthcare facility to be a little less scary by adding these three elements to the design of these medical spaces:
1. Places of fun and play. If the space allows, perhaps a playground or play area for children can be included in the space. Any space that can be designed for amusement and fun applies here. Places in which to run and walk around, water features, and green spaces are ideal elements to include in the healthcare facility.
2. Places to eat and drink. Restaurants and cafes offer respite and are a good feature that helps decrease anxiety in kids (and even adults!). Places that offer treats and tasty snacks can do a lot for boosting the morale of visitors to the healthcare facility.
3. Wide hallways, wide spaces. This is a design element that I have mentioned before, but the intent for kids will be the same: the wider and more expansive a space, the less intimidating and scary it can be, especially when it is well-lighted and adorned with aesthetic elements. Crowded spaces always cause distress, so lessening crowding in a space will be a plus point to the design. Regarding this, it is good to consider potential surge events and design wider areas for them accordingly.
‘Child-friendly’
Just to clarify, the term “child-friendly” in marketing-speak usually refers to an operational policy of the hospital. But these elements I have mentioned above are purely architectural and related to alleviating hospital fear. Architecture can affect the building’s effectiveness, but in a passive manner—unlike operations, which can be revised and implemented actively to improve hospital services.
That’s why the best way to design a hospital is to communicate with the end-users of the facility so that everything that they need in the design can be given space and solutions.