Post-surgery resuscitation room.
Nurses are being more intensely consulted in hospital facility design.
Kathy Okland, president of the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design, says the growing use of evidence-based design and the recognition that design can have an important influence on medical outcomes is making nurses more important in the planning and building of facility interior architecture.
“Nurses are very familiar with evidence-based practices based on their experience in evidence-based medicine,” Ms. Okland told Healthcare Design, “so it’s a natural alignment for them to step into [evidence-based design] and interpret that for others who may have found that science to be rather new.”
Consider how nurses are collaborating in hospital-room design and redesign to reduce patient pain, and hospital-acquired infections, increase patient engagement and raise caregiver efficiency.
Jaynelle Stichler, a Okland colleague, says that healthcare design is now a nursing-career option. She told Healthcare Design that more firms specializing in healthcare architecture are hiring nurses to “translate the needs of the healthcare environment to the architects and the design language back to the clinical providers.”