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The health care industry is highly regulated, subject to strict laws, and circumscribed by carefully developed standards of practice. Yet even health care space needs to work harder. A recent study by Nurture, Steelcase’s health care division, and the Mayo Clinic sought to understand the extent to which a consultation room designed to support present-day clinical encounters could affect the quality of the consultation between patients and clinicians.
Sixty-three pairs of patients and doctors took part in the study. The pairs were assigned by chance to either a conventional consultation room or to an experimental one. The experimental space placed the patient, care partner, and the clinician side by side, facing the computer screen while seated at a semicircular desk.
In post-visit follow-up surveys, researchers found that patient and clinician satisfaction with the conventional room was very high. In the experimental room, however, clinicians could share more information with patients while both viewed the screen. Patients felt they had more and better access to information, including their own records, test results, images, and education materials.
“This study supports the notion that the space in which people meet can influence how they work together,” says Victor Montori, M.D., the lead Mayo researcher. The consultation room design improved the quality of a patient visit, although Dr. Montori says more studies in other health care systems are needed to confirm the findings. This study grew out of Steelcase WorkSpace Futures (WSF) observations in 2005 that traditional exam/consultation rooms allowed the provider primary access to information on the computer, while patients and family members struggled to see the information from seats at the side. Sometimes physicians would give up their seats to allow the patient and family to better see the screen. This prompted Nurture to redesign the space to better support the behaviors they observed. The design included a half-round table that put the information in the center on a movable arm with an accompanying wireless keyboard and mouse. “It’s a more egalitarian setting for the consultation and better supports new, best practices in clinical communication,” says WSF health care researcher Caroline Kelly.
Tags: Healthcare, NeoCon, Workspace FuturesFiled under: 360 Magazine, Featured Articles
