Designing the Patient Room: Things to Consider, Part 1

When an architect conducts a formal meeting with the owners, doctors, and staff of healthcare facilities, a major point of discussion will always be the spaces that involve the provision of care to patients for extended periods of time. As such, many meetings are spent on how to refine and optimize the inpatient care experience of their healthcare facility.

While outpatient services are also discussed, the need for a personal touch and level of comfort in inpatient care requires a lot of careful analysis. Designing from Primary Care Facilities all the way to Tertiary Care Hospitals, I have often needed to change the design of the patient rooms to fit the many (MANY) variables that constitute healthcare facility design.

To clarify, the duration of care is the dividing factor on how one is treated in the healthcare space. This is usually called Inpatient and Outpatient Care; the defining difference between them is that medical care and intervention will take either less than 24 hours (outpatient) or more than 24 hours (inpatient). An extended definition of the inpatient services can be read here.

Below, I listed the design considerations that I often encounter during meetings and projects, which can be first categorized into five elements:

1. Healthcare Facility Administration. The directions that are the concern of the administrative organization of the space.

2. Patient Demographic. The elements that affect the patient room based on physical and social parameters of a specified community.

3. Design Elements of a Patient Room. Architectural specifics that a designer needs to remember.

4. Future-proofing the Patient Room. Elements of design that will allow a patient room to be efficiently upgraded for future care delivery technologies and services.

NOTE: I will not talk about specific dimensions and requirements, since every country has differing standards in terms of the needs of healthcare facilities. Instead, think of this as a guide for you to direct the design process of your works.

is it a room for maternity patients? pediatric? geriatric? bariatric? different patients have specific needs, which help determine how the patient room must be designed.

Healthcare Facility Administration Considerations

1. Public Perception of the Healthcare Facility. For better or for worse, the inpatient care experience of patients heavily influences the eventual reputation of the healthcare facility. In this regard, focus on specific targets and goals that give a more pleasant experience to patients. This can be anything from entertainment systems (Wi-Fi, television, etc.) to extra amenities or promises of an efficient processing of discharge and payment services. Architects may not have a direct say in this, but we need to consider the direction that the administrators of the healthcare facility want to go.

2. Better Healthcare Outcomes. The patient room needs to be designed to optimize the healthcare delivery of the doctors and medical staff to the patient. The healthcare facility’s primary purpose is to for proper service delivery; this is a major consideration that can affect the spacing, materials, and design.

3. Staffing Numbers. The healthcare facility needs to consider the number of nurses, doctors, and other medical staff to use the space, and as such this information needs to be finalized during the design process. The inpatient department spaces are affected by this. Improper projections of current and future needs result in a healthcare space that will be too cramped and overutilized in no time.

Patient Demographic Considerations

1. Location of Healthcare Facility. Is it an urban or rural location? Depending on the answer, this affects the number of patient rooms that will be needed in the healthcare facility. Sometimes, this means that there is a need to include hostel spaces for loved ones who may wish to stay near the healthcare facility.

2. Type of Healthcare Facility. There are many types of healthcare facilities that have inpatient services, from Primary Care Centers all the way to Tertiary Level Hospitals. Before the project planning even commences, owners must be clear on the type of facility they want built.

3. Male or Female, Child, Adult, or Senior. The focus of the healthcare facility also dictates patient room design. Is it a Pediatric Center or a Geriatric Center? Does it focus on specific demographics?

4. Specific Illnesses. If a facility is focused on specific care deliveries, then the patient rooms must also be designed to have specialized systems located in the inpatient areas. An example is patient rooms designed for bariatric patients; there are pulley and weight lifting systems installed inside the patient room to help the medical staff in the delivery of their care services.

5. Specific Organs. Like having healthcare spaces designed for specific illnesses, some patient rooms are designed to focus on care for the organ or body part. For example, the inpatient room in an orthopedic may have pulleys and hooks installed above the patient to help immobilize casted limbs.

The list of considerations on design elements and future-proofing will be tackled in my next blog post, which I will link here once it is posted.

"For better or for worse, the inpatient care experience of patients heavily influences the eventual reputation of the healthcare facility. In this regard, focus on specific targets and goals that give a more pleasant experience to patients."