Designing For Health: The Benefits Of Medical Fitouts For Patients And Practitioners
- Written by Daily Bulletin
When it comes to medical facilities, functionality and comfort are key. A medical fitout plays a crucial role in achieving this balance.
Soulmed takes pride in creating advanced medical fitouts that fulfil the practical needs of patients and practitioners while also shaping their experience. A design tailored to patient and practitioner comfort improves overall healthcare quality.
This blog post focuses on how design can enhance patient care and improve working conditions for healthcare professionals. The benefits discussed go beyond the typical considerations associated with healthcare environments.
Aesthetic Appeal
Experts say that working in an environment lacking visual appeal is challenging, as patients' rooms often have bland colours or no decoration, making them feel more like prison cells than spaces where they're supposed to heal.
The solution at Soulmed is to prioritise aesthetic appeal. Tastefully-designed touches, including actual paintings on walls (some hospitals use abstract oils), bright-piped couches, and intriguing wallpapers filled with pop art patterns, are incorporated. The goal is not just to liven things up; research shows that attractive visual surroundings aid patients' recovery and overall well-being.
Tasteful decorations serve as effective stress antidotes. Colourful wallpapers or repainting room shades while considering colour psychology (e.g., warmer tones) could improve guest comfort standards by over fifty per cent.
Ergonomic Furniture & Equipment
Many healthcare professionals suffer from debilitating injuries during their careers, such as back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, due to constant bending over lab tables or attending to bedridden patients.
At Soulmed, the focus is on addressing these risks through furniture design. Sophisticated ergonomic tables that automatically adjust height without risking fallen IV equipment are customised. Mobile diagnostic machines that can be wheeled to the patient's bedside are also incorporated for added comfort.
Smart Design Features
Soulmed strongly believes in integrating smart technology into medical fitouts. Smart tools offer additional features not found in manual systems. For instance, leveraging AI and IoT reduces the possibility of nurse burnout while increasing healthcare efficiencies.
One client shared how introducing a smart facility design improved their maintenance cycle, even with fewer visits from repairmen, thanks to the architecture accounting for system bugs. This approach is referred to as pleasure by design.
Putting Communications Front and Center
Clear and concise communication is essential for successful medical operations. Soulmed emphasises the importance of effective communication, especially in operations involving multiple departments. Good communication can make the difference between successful surgeries and mistakes.
To facilitate clear communication, fitout spaces are optimised to accommodate the frequent fitting of intercoms with screens for visibility in each antechamber. This improved network promotes swift decision-making processes, with patients' safety as the top priority.
Better-Informed Patient Care Communities
Patient satisfaction is fundamental to treatment success, even in a room full of unwell individuals. One overlooked factor is how well-designed health facilities encourage patients with similar conditions to form communities focused on recovery.
For example, having larger wards instead of small nurses' stations may result in fewer individually dedicated resources but a livelier turnover, improving the chance of forming bonds among patients facing similar struggles or treatments.
Soulmed understands that well-designed medical fitouts offer much more than just an upgrade to infirmaries; they foster positive feelings among caregivers and patients, improving diagnoses and ensuring prompt recalibrations when needed most.
Wrapping Up
The critical role of smartly designed medical facilities in achieving optimal health outcomes has been underestimated for too long. Soulmed has successfully pioneered a blueprint for healthcare innovation worldwide. Medical fitouts are not mere spaces; they are gateways to connecting with fellow patients while passively receiving subtle self-motivation prescriptions through fitting design elements wherever possible.