The bioethics research by Dr. Anderson and her team has highlighted the need for policymakers to address long-term care (LTC) issues around the built environment, currently without clinical oversight. Growing knowledge of how architecture affects behavior, well-being, and health outcomes demands that concerns about evaluating benefits and harms, freedom, and consent be thoroughly vetted. Their novel and pioneering Bioethics Peer Review (BPR) model is currently being implemented to highlight bioethical issues across multiple dimensions of the building and its operations. The team’s campaign with federal policymakers will aim to make them aware and consider these bioethical concerns, as new knowledge engenders new responsibilities.

Read more HERE.

Overview: The landscape of healthcare (and healthcare design) is ever-evolving, and poses opportunities and challenges for care providers, patients and communities, and designers of healthcare spaces. Key drivers are influencing how care and care settings are being redeveloped and understanding these changes is critical for professionals working in this space.

We’ve seen increased challenges with the healthcare workforce, mounting financial pressures and projections, and fluctuations in how and where care will be delivered. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that we engage in on-going conversations and sharing of expertise that contribute to the shaping the industry.

The Workshop

This one-day virtual workshop provides the latest thinking in what is driving the future of healthcare, and offers perspectives from a myriad of professions through presentations, case studies, and conversation from experts in the field.

Attendees will have opportunities to pose questions to workshop faculty and interact with fellow attendees in thoughtful and meaningful ways.

See the full agenda HERE.

Excerpt:

Dochitect speaks to WLRN Public Media about the impact of building design on healing.

Excerpt:

“Changing out lightbulbs in nursing homes can impact fall rates significantly,” said Dr. Diana Anderson, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at Boston University. “Of course, falls are things we don’t want to happen. It causes a lot of economic burden, of injury burden and hospital system use burden.”

Anderson, who’s also a healthcare architect at global solutions firm Jacobs, came up with a term for her expertise in the intersection of medicine and architecture: dochitect.

“It is a term that I created and trademarked, registered as sort of a brand that I think really helps illustrate the fact that these two professions can be integrated,” she said. She strongly believes their integration can help patients significantly. Too much is at stake with the volume of people getting care at a facility like a hospital over the years.

“That’s a pretty strong statement to make, to say that the building you’re in is as powerful to your health as a pill you might take, or a surgical procedure you might have in the hospital,” Anderson said. “But there is evidence to show this is the case.”

She points to research including how close a patient’s room is to a nursing station, color patterns, and even floor lines to help patients with dementia.

Well-being of staff matters, too

The health care model in the U.S. depends a lot on patient satisfaction because it’s a payer model. Anderson’s calling on health systems to care about the design of spaces for staff.

“What we often see in design now is what we call this onstage-offstage model, whereby patients will often get the shiny lobby with the art, the window and the sculpture or fountain and staff will get a lounge at the back of the building without any windows, with barren walls,” she said.

The wellbeing of staff may impact the care and the work they deliver. Until design is made for all of the people inside the walls of a facility, then equity will still be lagging.

“What I think is really neat is that doctors and nurses and other clinical professionals really want to think about design,” Anderson said. “I have people calling me saying, ‘I really, really want a certificate program or a degree because I think it can impact how I deliver care in the operating room, in the clinic space.’”

Health care delivery has no shortage of complex problems. The experts to solve a lot of them are already working at a hospital and she believes having more of them gain expertise in design will yield even better results.

Read or listen to the full story HERE.

Excerpt:

If you’re going into hospital for treatment, you want the best: the finest doctors, the latest medicines, the most-advanced surgical techniques. But the success of your care could also come down to something much more mundane than medical or technical wizardry: the location of your room. Land in an out-of-sight intensive care room and your chances of bouncing back tumble versus getting placed opposite the nursing station—you might even be more likely to die. Other aspects of your hospital room’s design—the position of the bed, the location of the sink, whether there’s a window—may also shape your recovery.

Poor hospital architecture and design could be keeping you laid up, but it doesn’t have to be that way, says Diana C. Anderson, a Boston University geriatrician who is also an expert on hospital design. She studies healthcare facilities with the goal of raising awareness of the potential for the built space to influence care and recovery.

Read more HERE.

Dochitect elected to the Council of Fellows by the American College of Healthcare Architects’ Board of Regents, an honor held for those that exhibit and represent the highest standards of the profession.

Pictured below is Dochitect receiving her meal and certificate with Clyde Ted Moore III, President of the American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA) (left), and her fellowship sponsor, William J. Hercules, CEO of WJH Health and a past president of the ACHA (right).

Excerpt:
Covid has also sparked interest in being prepared for other events, said Diana Anderson, a Boston-based physician and architect at Jacobs Solutions Inc. Clients, architects, and designers are thinking more about natural disasters, climate change and other emergency situations that a building might need to be ready for, she said.

Read the full article HERE.

Physicians with design experience dissect what is (and isn’t) working for patients, staff and facilities when it comes to offering quality care with wellness-focused benefits.

DIANA ANDERSON, MD, M.ARCH HEALTHCARE PRINCIPAL AT JACOBS 

• Cofounder of Clinicians for Design

• Instructor of Neurology at Boston University

• Geriatric Neurology Fellow at VA Boston Healthcare System

Health professionals can provide insights into health care operations and, most importantly, patient needs and experiences. These perspectives represent a unique opportunity for architects to experience the world of clinical medicine in a way that is typically hidden. We can walk the halls; we can talk to physicians and other clinicians; we can shadow individuals as they go about their daily routines. Having health providers participate in projects also promotes a data-driven design process, strengthening the built environment to benefit health outcomes.

While the clinical practice of health care and the fields of architecture, planning, and design have traditionally occupied different professional, social, and cultural worlds, emerging professionals are asking to move beyond these infrequent intersections and seek a convergence of career models through the domains of research, education, and practice. This movement has accelerated during the pandemic given the need for rapid, innovative, and often design-based solutions to many problems.

The pandemic exposed the need for a shift toward a data-driven design process, and the role buildings play in our physical, mental, and social health. One striking example is research that demonstrated that smaller-scale nursing homes had better outcomes—significantly fewer COVID-19 infections, hospital admissions, and deaths. What concerns me is the reactive approach to design seen during the pandemic with infection control as the main driver, which in my mind is only one element of health design. Ensuring quality of life and health (which includes mental, physical, and social health) for those who use health care spaces should still be paramount.

We can certainly create sealed spaces to keep infections at bay, but there is often a domino effect. We have seen the negative health effects of social isolation and loneliness—in medical settings, research has shown that long-term-care residents without personal contact with family or friends experienced greater excess mortality early in the COVID-19 pandemic. And this concept spans all spaces and environments. The detrimental effects of forced social isolation can be mitigated through design, even within our own homes. For example, views of nature at home have been shown to reduce levels of depression, loneliness, and anxiety, sometimes more than the actual use of outdoor green space itself. Design of the built environment at all spatial scales—from our homes to our neighborhoods and cities—is a determinant of health.

Read the full article HERE.

Excerpt:

Anderson recommends designating a separate bedroom and bathroom if possible, and ensuring that other household members stay out of both spaces. “Consider signage on the door if small children or elderly, cognitively-impaired family members live in the same household so they do not mistakenly go into this space.” Anderson further suggests removing any belongings from the patient’s room that someone else in the home might need, so they don’t have to risk their health to enter the space and retrieve them. “Hand sanitizer, especially if soap and water are not available at a sink within the bedroom suite,” Anderson recommends.

“It’s important to clean areas that are frequently touched, for example door handles, light switches, etc., especially those that may be between the bedroom and the bathroom or within spaces that other family members have access to,” the dochitect advises. You’ll want to have a supply of masks handy, “to be worn even between bedroom and bathroom if the person needs to walk down a hall where other family members also go,” Anderson says.

Read the full story HERE.