LIGHTING SYSTEMS
A rendered image of a bedroom at the Peterborough City Hospital Mental Health and Integrated Care Centre – featuring Whitecroft Lighting’s Florence low-profile bedhead luminaire and Anti-Ligature package.
from over 30 Whitecroft mental health lighting projects across the UK.
A special role to pay Primarily, the health, safety, and wellbeing of those who occupy, work in, and visit facilities must be a priority, and lighting has its own special role to play in achieving this. For service-users, this can mean considering a broad range of service-user conditions and associated symptoms, and then factoring in how they will shape a person’s environment. For example, while a portion of service-users might be resident for just a few days, others may stay for months or years, so lighting must contribute to people feeling comfortable and at home, rather than contributing to them feeling as if they are simply ‘passing through’ a clinical environment. This means that lighting in mental healthcare settings can often have a more domestic feel than in other healthcare or hospital settings, with a more homely aesthetic, and warmer colour. However, although the lighting may look warm and cosy, the level of design and specification must go far
The meeting rooms at the Peterborough City Hospital Mental Health and Integrated Care Centre incorporate Whitecroft Lighting’s Recessed 600 Medium Secure Units kit.
beyond what you would find in the home.
Durable design Specialist light fittings in a mental healthcare facility need to be designed to be robust for a wide variety of reasons – including tampering, risk of damage by a service-user, and risk of accidental damage. Recognising this, Whitecroft tests the resilience of products with a variety of structured physical trials that include repeated hard impacts for up to three hours. Hardware must also be secure from tampering, and at the Peterborough City Hospital mental health unit, Whitecroft installed its Horizon Anti-Ligature product, which is specifically designed for mental health inpatient applications. The main luminaire body has an ‘anti-pick’ mastic seal to prevent any unwanted intrusion to the internal mechanism, while the robust construction and tamper-proof fixing screws ensure protection from harm to any service-user.
The four pillars of lighting healthcare Based on the direction of travel of the NHS and healthcare, Whitecroft has developed
four strategic lighting pillars to guide its decision making: l Infection control: All our lighting products are built to withstand regular and rigorous cleaning regimes, and the application of stronger cleaning agents, chemical solutions, or gases.
l Design and compliance: Achieving compliance and other performance targets means guaranteeing that the correct lighting levels, uniformity, and glare limits, are achieved, along with the colour temperature and rendition that aid treatment, and care and recovery. To meet the needs in mental healthcare settings, Whitecroft’s Medium Secure Unit (MSU) range has been independently tested and certified to meet the Department of Health Environmental Design Guide 2011 for Adult Medium Secure Services.
l Service-user experience: The links between lighting and wellbeing are now well established, with the right environment delivering visual comfort to staff, patients, and visitors, and – crucially – helping to put patients’ minds at rest and contributing to their recovery. The right quality of lighting also aids the clinical team in performing their duties.
l Energy and sustainability: Low-energy lighting systems have an important part to play in reducing running costs and operational carbon, while Whitecroft is also increasingly applying circular economy principles to healthcare lighting, by increasing the use of long- life and replaceable components that reduce the use of materials, waste, and embodied carbon.
Appropriate high-quality lighting can make a significant difference to the environment and feel of mental healthcare settings.
THE NETWORK | FEBRUARY 2023
Peterborough City Hospital mental health unit As I mentioned earlier, an excellent recent example of where these ‘four pillars’ have been combined to advantageous effect is at the mental health unit at Peterborough City Hospital – in a project which highlights the importance of understanding the specialist compliance requirements in that clinical environment. Whitecroft has a long history with the site,
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