Color Coded Key Legend of different spaces on inpatient unit

I have found that one of the biggest challenges in planning new inpatient units has been balancing the needs of patients, families and staff. They all are wanting and deserving of adequate space on the unit and inevitably there is never enough square footage to give everyone everything they need.

It is especially true for units that have been programmed with the code minimum requirements, which has become an increasingly popular practice mainly to control high construction costs.

I recently experienced this situation on a new inpatient unit project and was required to plan to a program developed with code minimum requirements. Throughout the planning process everyone was fighting for space and in the end they all had to compromise and no one was really satisfied with the end result.

I was constantly being challenged to create spaces that provided adequate size and quantity of staff offices, on-call rooms, and workrooms for training, teaching, consultation and rounding. (DPH guidelines require only 1 staff office on a unit). I’m not advocating for staff spaces to overrun the unit – of course everyone wants their own office – but there are critical functional requirements that are not addressed in the guidelines.

Never mind providing quiet family respite areas, child play areas, and dining for families on the unit. More often than not these functions are all crammed into the “Family Lounge” on the unit with bus-stop style seating and bare minimum amenities.

It is critical to the success of the project for the planner to look beyond code minimum and be allowed to address proper flow, function and design of these spaces.

It is an unrealistic goal for a planner to meet current clinical demands (never mind state-of-the art), implement best practices in healthcare design and truly create healing environments without looking beyond the required codes. To really be successful and gain high patient and staff satisfaction projects need to create programs that truly reflect the needs of staff, families and patients without being narrowly focusing on meeting code minimums.