HEALTHCARE ESTATES 2023 KEYNOTES
because you want to see the first sign of a raised temperature, for example – so colours are really vital.”
The ‘seven flows’ of healthcare.
with real sunlight and fresh air, their recovery at a cellular level is much quicker.” Florence Nightingale had recognised the importance of air and light; hence the Nightingale wards no longer used ‘because we’ve moved on to things like privacy and dignity’. “With that privacy and dignity, however, “Suzanne MacCormick asked, “have we lost sight of the benefits of light and air? In fact, there is plenty of empirical research proving that surgical peak patients exposed to greater sunlight require 22% fewer pain relief medications. This resulted – in the studies we looked at – in a 21% reduction in drug budgets. More importantly, the patient experience was so much better, because sunlight and air literally heal us at a cellular level.”
An ‘indoor species’ Humans had, by now, become an ‘indoor species’, with many of the offices and other spaces we occupy almost devoid of air and light. The speaker said: “In many meeting rooms, open the door, and it
literally breathes air back into the room and invigorates you, getting oxygen to the brain, and you feel a lot more alive. It also increases serotonin levels.” On the impact of colour, Suzanne
MacCormick had recently worked with ‘a wonderful architect,’ who had told her ‘Everything about colour is rubbish.’ She said: “I’m going to challenge that – so, for example, we know yellow makes babies cry more, and patients far more irritable, and gives clinicians migraines and headaches. I’m not talking about looking at swatches, or the colour of a jacket, but rather the experiential thing we get subconsciously on walking into that coloured environment. “Orange environments can make you
feel nauseous, while green can make you vomit, and is really bad from a clinician’s perspective, because – as ladies here may know – when you get red and blotchy you use green base foundation to remove the red. As a clinician, however, you don’t want red colouring removed from the patient,
Colour quadrants Showing a slide of a circular colour spectrum (see page 36), the speaker explained that all the ‘negative’ colours – especially greens and yellows – sat in the top right quadrant. “Conversely,” she explained, “the calming colours that make us feel good – such as blues and pinks – sit at the bottom left, while we avoid shades of red (shown in the 8 o’clock – 10 o’clock portion of the spectrum) because they make us angry and scared. Isn’t it interesting that there’s a distinct line running horizontally across the centre of this spectrum separating the colours that that make us feel good or ‘bad’ subconsciously? Why do we use the colours in the top half?” Reinforcing her point about the impact
of different colours on patients, and indeed staff, Suzanne MacCormick drew on an anecdote. Showing a slide of part of a hospital interior, she said: “Building a new single-bedded extension to a hospital, we used this (purple) palette. All the nurses had expressed their reluctance to work in the environment, saying they preferred large wards. At our open day, however, every single nurse walked in, commented on the ‘great’ environment, and signed up to work there – because we got the colour right.”
Alongside their impact on mood and
wellbeing, different colours could improve wayfinding, a point again demonstrated via slides showing hospital environments. She said of one particularly well-signed environment: “Here, patients would arrive, look at the coloured wayfinding signs, and get to the required treatment location quickly and easily. They’d then wonder how they got there, but would also mention how easily navigable the building was. That’s because – at a subconscious level – you pick up a colour a million times quicker than you get to a sign to read it. Your brain thus takes you where you want to go. Why aren’t we doing more of this?” Switching focus, Suzanne MacCormick
In eliminating the use of Nightingale wards, the speaker asked if we had ‘lost sight of’ the benefits of light and air.
34 Health Estate Journal January 2024
showed a slide of several HTM and HBN documents, and said: “We have a plethora of standards that are so out of date and inaccurate they do not deliver clinical excellence, yet we have to use them. I want to challenge this. I really believe we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. This room is full of experts who really know how to deliver excellence, and clinicians who know how to deliver great clinical care. A healthcare building really isn’t about the bricks and mortar; it’s about delivering excellent patient outcomes.” The speaker said many of the audience would have experienced buildings around the world characterised by excellence in structures, engineering, and aesthetics, and would
Courtesy of Suzanne MacCormick
Courtesy of Suzanne MacCormick
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