ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
and inpatient floors. Some institutions, however, decide to fully restrict access to all lobbies and amenities, including play areas, resource centres, dining, and mediation spaces. Planning the spatial sequencing of lobby elements to support the hospital’s security philosophy sets the foundation for a safe and successful lobby design. Work with the security stakeholder team to determine which programme elements require security screening prior to access, and those that will be freely usable. Include public elevators, waiting areas, cafés and dining areas, gift shops, outdoor gardens and play areas, public toilets, conference centres and education spaces, and outpatient services in the conversation.
8: Prioritise situational awareness Certain departments within the hospital – namely the Emergency Department and inpatient units, are considered higher risk for escalating aggression, violence, and other security concerns. Prioritise anti-abduction and anti- elopement risks by ensuring that staff can monitor and control access through all department entry/exit points. Care team stations that offer visibility into the patient room provide a layer of situational awareness so that staff are alerted to escalating situations inside. Desk designs should minimise staff isolation or entrapment, and they should
Tucked away quiet spaces or seating nooks for privacy can help minimise agitation and anxiety and provide balance to more active, social areas.
Nora Colman
be standardised from unit to unit with consistently located duress stations. Receiving bad news – especially about a child – is often a trigger for aggression and violence. Delivering difficult news in an intentionally designed consultation space can create a safer, more controlled process for providers and staff.
Acknowledgement n This article, titled ‘Caring for kids’, first appeared in
the Spring 2024 issue of Canadian Healthcare Facilities, the official magazine of the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society (CHES). HEJ thanks the author, CHES, and the magazine’s publisher, MediaEdge, for allowing its reproduction, in slightly edited form, here.
Nora Colman, MD, is an Assistant Professor in Paediatrics in the division of Paediatric Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She has extensive experience in leading initiatives where simulation has been used as a vehicle to meet system- wide quality goals. She is also passionate about the role of simulation to proactively identify latent safety threats in new healthcare design.
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August 2025 Health Estate Journal 31
Brad Feinknopf Photography
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