DESIGN FOR WELLBEING
The focus on ‘wellness’ for both staff and patients
Alex Solk, Partner and Healthcare lead at Sheppard Robson, argues that the next generation of hospital design should ‘learn from the office’s drive for wellness’. He believes that ‘wellness in the workplace is as vital to hospital design as it is to re-thinking our offices’.
There has rightly been a huge focus on the importance of NHS staff during COVID-19 – from rainbows in windows to clapping on doorsteps, we have seen a public outpouring of appreciation. This must also be met with better working conditions to make NHS staff feel rightly appreciated and valued, and what better way than a radical re-think of the quality of spaces that such personnel have to work and rest in? By utilising ideas from office design, we can create uplifting facilities that are flexible, efficient, and cost-effective, with the skills of the architect at the heart of the conversation.
While clinical advances and technology in healthcare have progressed rapidly, hospital design – and the quality of spaces the sector provides – are often overlooked. However, the pandemic has created impetus for the sector to embrace new design thinking, leading designers to ask: ‘What can healthcare learn from the developments of other sectors?’ I am particularly interested in drawing a parallel with offices, and how that sector has put wellness at the heart of the design process.
Lacking ‘latitude’ for fresh thinking Over the last decade we have seen workplaces freely adopt new ideas, with the architect and designer central to this process. Hospital schemes over the same period have often lacked the latitude or budget for fresh design thinking. With the government’s commitment to its New Hospital Programme (NHP), there is a real opportunity for change. At the top of the list of advances in workplace is the championing of wellness. While good design should always have people and health-centric considerations, new accreditation has allowed workplace professionals to push even further ahead in this field, with wellness principles used as a way of demonstrating an organisation’s investment in people and, ultimately, also to attract and retain the best staff. Wellness in the workplace is as vital to hospital design as it is to re-thinking our offices. However, key design ideas – such as maximising natural light and framing views – need to be prioritised further in
On the current North Manchester General Hospital scheme – where the whole development pivots around a central ‘village green’ space – ‘significant time and energy have been spent in getting the quality of this public space right’.
hospital design. While the primary focus should remain on the technical spaces that allow hospitals to provide the best care, this emphasis should not come at the expense of wider considerations of the physical and mental wellbeing of staff – not just patients. The holistic definition of wellness and its application to hospital design is made even more timely when considering the ongoing crisis in the NHS, with more staff currently leaving the service than joining.
A break from ‘more institutional’ spaces We are starting to see a break from more institutional spaces in healthcare, with hospitals setting a new benchmark for quality. A heightened interest in wellness is evident in our project at North Manchester
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By utilising ideas from office design, we can create uplifting facilities that are flexible, efficient, and cost-effective
General Hospital, where the whole development pivots around a central ‘village green’ space. Significant time and energy has been spent in getting the quality of this public space right, providing outdoor spaces for staff, visitors, and patients, while also ‘softening’ the edges of the large development to make it feel more welcoming and community-focused. Wellness design principles are no longer
a ‘nice to have’ in the commercial office world – and should not be in hospital design either. My colleagues working on commercial developments are seeing how wellbeing is essential to the office of the future, and without a clear plan to keep people safe – and in the longer-term make them healthier – organisations will find it difficult to attract talent back into the office. This same care and emphasis on attracting talent is as relevant, or even more so, to the healthcare sector. But how we do this, and what design elements should we focus on? Firstly, I think we need to ensure that
any space in a hospital where time is spent addresses the key themes of light, air, sound, and comfort, in new and more radical ways. People will still want to see visible demonstrations of the wellness agenda, such as biophilia and healthy
March 2022 Health Estate Journal 65
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