Postoccupancy Evaluation of a Neighborhood Concept Redesign of an Acute Care Nursing Unit in a Planetree Hospital.

OBJECTIVE: A comparative study was undertaken to survey nurses working in an acute care nursing unit before and after moving to a new hospital to investigate the impact of a nursing unit designed utilizing Planetree build criteria. BACKGROUND: The physical and emotional demands of frontline practitioners is a serious concern for patient safety and staff retention as the environmental design of nursing units can influence human errors from fatigue and interruption. METHOD: A pre-move survey was conducted with acute care nurses in a conventional design nursing unit who were moving to a new facility. After the move to the new hospital design, the same survey was readministered to obtain comparative performance information. Qualitative responses were analyzed for triangulation with survey responses. Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) and Press Ganey scores were collected over a 5-year period. RESULTS: There were statistically significant improvements for most of the survey questions, especially for work efficiency and productivity, the design of the patient room and of support spaces, the information systems, and the environmental conditions. There were statistically significant improvements in the HCHAPS and Press Ganey survey questions. CONCLUSIONS: The postoccupancy survey showed statistically significant improvements in most of the concerns highlighted in the pre-move survey and significant improvements in the workflow and overall satisfaction of nurses. Press Ganey results revealed all but five domains fell in the significantly improved category.

Lessons Learned From Decentralization of an Elective Surgery Medical-Surgical Unit.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to examine changes in healthcare practitioners' perception of supportiveness of their physical work environment, and trend in patient fall, when moving from a centralized to a decentralized unit configuration. BACKGROUND: Previous studies on decentralization have not uniformly provided findings consistent with desired outcome. METHOD: A pretest-posttest study was conducted in an elective surgery medical-surgical unit in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The independent variable was the physical design supporting centralized versus decentralized nursing models. Data were collected from healthcare staff with a self-report survey "before" (September 2017; n = 42) and "after" (June 2019; n = 22), and interviews. Before-after data were analyzed using both parametric and nonparametric tests to identify significant differences. Qualitative responses were analyzed to identify triangulating evidences. Monthly patient fall data were collected for a 3-year period and analyzed using log-linear Poisson Regression model. RESULTS: Results show favorable assessments in the areas of overall supportiveness of design, equipment and soiled utility location, peer support, process flow visualization, and overall satisfaction. A reduction in patient falls was observed. Unfavorable outcomes were found in the contexts of walking distance, multidisciplinary collaboration, alarm audibility, nurse station size, and PPE location. CONCLUSIONS: This study underscores that the success of a unit cannot be achieved without coordinated and successful interventions in the areas of operations, processes, policies, culture, and the physical design.

An exploratory examination of medical gas booms versus traditional headwalls in intensive care unit design.

Should power, medical gases, and monitoring and communications systems be located in a headwall or a ceiling-mounted boom in intensive care unit (ICU) rooms? Often, only the financial costs could be determined for the options, whereas data regarding its potential influence on teamwork, safety, and efficiency are lacking. Hence, purchase decisions are more arbitrary than evidence based. This study simulated care delivery in settings with a traditional headwall and a ceiling boom. Observed were the way the following elements were managed and the extent either system affected flexibility, ergonomics, and teamwork: tubing for intravenous fluids, medical gases, and suction drainage; monitoring leads and equipment power cords; and the medical equipment itself. Simulation runs involving 6 scenarios were conducted with the voluntary participation of 2 physicians, 2 nurse practitioners, 2 respiratory therapists, and 4 registered nurses at a children's tertiary care center in December 2007. Analysis suggests that booms have an advantage over headwalls in case of high-acuity ICU patients and when procedures are performed inside patient rooms. However, in case of lower-acuity ICU patients, as well as when procedures are not typically conducted in the patient room, booms may not provide a proportionate level of advantage when compared with the additional cost involved in its procurement.

The Importance of Specific Workplace Environment Characteristics for Maximum Health and Performance: Healthcare Workers' Perspective.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the importance of specific workplace environment characteristics for maximum health and performance, assigned by healthcare employees, and how they relate to the nature of their work. METHODS: A cross-sectional mixed-method study was conducted with content analysis and robust regression models to examine the relationship between workplace environment characteristics and perceived importance in promoting health and performance. RESULTS: Our findings suggest that perceptions of key environment characteristics that safeguard health and performance in healthcare workplaces may vary by employee sex, setting, and nature of healthcare work involved. Theme and model descriptions of the influence of these factors on participant perceptions are provided. CONCLUSIONS: Employee feedback on workplace characteristics that impact health and performance could be instrumental in determining the priorities of workplace design.

Rethinking efficiency in acute care nursing units: analyzing nursing unit layouts for improved spatial flow.

OBJECTIVE: This paper introduces a new design tool to increase efficiency in acute care settings. This visual tool facilitates matching spatial flow with caregivers' workflow to reduce waste and redundancies, as recommended by Lean thinking. Providing work environments that protect caregivers from fatigue, interruptions, and redundancies can contribute to quality patient care. METHODS: By studying the Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities and reviewing the literature, the authors identified the main clinical spaces supporting nursing care and their important linkages. Space syntax, a diagrammatic analysis of relationships, was used to decode spatial relationships among the clinical spaces in five case studies. The movement distributions were measured and possible conflicts with focus-demanding tasks, such as noise and interruptions, were identified. The information was summarized in a visual diagram providing the "syntactic anatomy" of the most important work spaces. RESULTS: The main clinical spaces were the following: (1) patient corridor; (2) nurses' station; (3) medication area; (4) clean room; (5) soiled room; (6) physicians' dictation area; (7) report room; (8) restricted nourishment area; (9) equipment storage; and (10) unrestricted nourishment area. The report room, nourishment area, and physician workspace showed strong linkages to the patient corridor and nurses' station, although such spaces were not clearly discussed in the design guidelines. The most caregiver movement occurs in the patient corridor and nurses' station. These areas pose the greatest possibility of interruptions by persons. The results were translated into a visual design efficiency checklist. CONCLUSION: Illustrating the spatial order of the support spaces-and comparing that to use patterns-enables designers to reduce the movement sequences nurses undertake when accessing resources and identify where the flow is disrupted by "displaced" functions.

A multidimensional framework for assessing patient room configurations.

PURPOSE: A framework for multidimensional assessment of patient room configurations is presented. Twenty-three issues are considered and categorized under six domains of assessment: (1) patient safety, (2) staff efficiency, (3) circulation, (4) infection control, (5) patient considerations, and (6) family amenities. Use of the framework to rank issues by importance and assess six alternative patient room configurations by a diverse group of experts in a symposium is described. BACKGROUND: One of the key questions posed during inpatient room design is the location of the bathroom. What issues are affected by the variations in room configuration that arise from bathroom location? A complete articulation of the issues that potentially are affected by room configuration is not available in the literature. FRAMEWORK: The list of issues was developed by the authors in preparation for a symposium. The symposium was organized in May 2007 and attended by 14 experts from four institutions. Six alternative room configurations were used. Variations in the configurations included: (1) three same-handed and three mirror-image rooms; (2) three outboard, two inboard, and one nested bathroom; and (3) three rooms with footwall bathrooms and three with headwall bathrooms. In a four-step process, the attendees ranked the issues, discussed them in detail, rated each room configuration against each issue on a seven-point suitability scale, and conducted an overall assessment of the six configurations. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the ratings and rankings provided by the symposium participants, outboard bathroom locations were found to be most suitable, followed by nested and inboard configurations. Furthermore, configurations with patient bathrooms located on the footwall were rated as more suitable than headwall locations. The authors recommend, however, that the framework be used to determine a suitable room configuration in a specific context, rather than to identify configurations that will perform well universally.