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Publication type: "Letters to the Editor"

Covid-19: pandemic healthcare centres should have already existed

April 30, 2020 / Dochitect / Design for Infection Control, Design for Resiliency, Health Design & Ethics, The Physician-Architect Model

Letters to the Editor

Publication: BMJ, Letters to the Editor
Publication Date: April 30, 2020
Authors: Neel Sharma & Diana Anderson
View Letter

Covid-19: pandemic healthcare centres should have already existed

Excerpt: Too little too late are the words being uttered by medical professionals in both the UK and US at the rising numbers of confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths.1 Healthcare architects and engineers support these sentiments given the frantic scramble for adaptive reuse of existing spaces to deliver care.1 Knowing weeks in advance of the global spread of this virus did little to spark momentum in the US and UK health systems to prepare early for what lay ahead.

Read the Letter HERE

Letters to the Editor

Drafting and doctoring – The Globe and Mail

May 31, 2019 / Dochitect / Evidence-Based Design

Letters to the Editor

Publication: The Globe and Mail, Letter to the Editor
Publication Reference: May 31, 2019
Author: Diana Anderson, MD
View Letter

Drafting and doctoring

Excerpt: Re How Architects Ruined Health Care (May 24): While, as a physician and architect, I agree that focusing on aesthetics has tipped design toward patient satisfaction with less emphasis on behind-the-scenes clinician space, hospital architecture is a complex process – not unlike patient care.

Read the full Letter to the Editor here.

Letters to the Editor

Architectural Armor: Preventive Biocidal Surfaces

October 23, 2017 / Dochitect / Design for Patient Safety, Evidence-Based Design

Letters to the Editor

Publication: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, Letter to the Editor
Publication Reference: 2017, Vol. 10(5) 162-164
Author: Diana C. Anderson, MD, MArch, Ken Trinder, Kate Mitchell, and Erica Mitchell
 View Article

Excerpt: Currently, there are two materials that qualify as preventive biocidal surfaces. Copper and copper alloys are one material. There is now an additional material that suspends cuprous oxide in a polymer, resulting in an equally efficacious substance that can be used both as a slab and as injection-molded shapes. Distinguishing itself from copper alloys, the cuprous oxide in a polymer looks and feels like any other synthetic quartz surface with a smooth, natural stone appearance, without rusting or oxidizing, and fabricates like any other hard surface, with lower cost implication.

For more information, read more about EOS Surfaces here.

Click here to read this Letter to the Editor, in which the evidence of Preventive Biocidal Surfaces is explored. 

Letters to the Editor, Peer-Reviewed Publications

A View From and On the Window

July 1, 2014 / Dochitect / Design for Geriatrics

Letter to the Editors

Publication: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, Letter to the Editors
Publication Reference: 2014 Summer;7(4):135-9.
Authors: Penelope Ann Shaw, PhD, & Diana C. Anderson, MD, MRAIC, LEED AP

View article

views_brighterExcerpt: One of us, Diana Anderson, is a physician and an architect whose career is aimed at bridging the gap that exists between medicine, research, and architecture in order to improve design and operational efficiency of the clinical environment. She has worked in many hospitals and healthcare envi­ronments that are not supportive of staff well-being nor sometimes even patient healing. Dr. Anderson often uses clinical anecdotes in her writing, linking them back to design in order to increase awareness of design’s impact among her clin­ical colleagues. A recently published piece in the Journal of the American Geriat­rics Society entitled Rx: Window Bed recounted her experience with critical care unit delirium and the potential impact of windows on a patient’s physiologic response; a synopsis of this encounter is detailed below.

The other author, Penelope Ann Shaw (Penny), is a nursing home resident who has been living in a facility in a bed by a window for 11 years. She is a survivor of critical care (having spent 4 months in an ICU on life support) from an acute phase of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neuromuscular disorder in which a per­son’s immune system damages the nerve cells, in her case causing almost total paralysis. That was followed by a year in a respiratory rehabilitation hospital. Of the 11 years in her current facility, she was mostly in bed for 3½ years with a tracheostomy and a feeding tube.

Penny reached out to Diana after reading that piece in the Journal of the Amer­ican Geriatrics Society in order to relate her story of how a window changed her experience dramatically while in long-term care. They teamed up to write a piece that builds on the topic of windows and exterior views. In the following sections, they provide insight into how these architectural elements can be life changing for patients and of vital importance for staff.

Read the complete letter to the editors including Penny’s patient perspective and Diana’s physician-architect perspective.

Letters to the Editor

Lessons from Evidence-Based Medicine: What Healthcare Designers Can Learn From the Medical Field

June 1, 2009 / Dochitect / Evidence-Based Design

Letter to the Editors

Publication: Health Environments Research & Design Journal
Publication Reference: 2009 Summer;2(4):130-1.
View letter


2009_HERD COVERThe theory paper by Viets entitled “Lessons from Evidence-Based Medicine: What Healthcare Designers Can Learn From the Medical Field,” advises that the field of medicine, like architecture, has faced many challenges in adopting an evidence-based approach.

Read dochitect’s letter to the editor in response to this article, which comments on the challenges faced in adopting an evidence-based approach, within both the medical and architectural fields.

Letters to the Editor

A View on the Room

February 4, 2009 / Dochitect / Evidence-Based Design

Letter to the Editor

Publication: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Letter to the Editor
Publication Reference: 2009 Feb 4;301(5):486-7.

2009_JAMA COVERIn their JAMA commentary entitled “Single-patient rooms for safe patient-centered hospitals”, Drs Detsky and Etchells present an overview of the debate about single-patient rooms, confirming the current status of private rooms as the industry standard for new construction in the United States.

Dochitect responds to the article and comments on patient room types and design, noting that one room size may not fit all.

Read dochitect’s Letter to the Editor here. Copyright © 2009 American Medical Association.  All rights reserved.

Letters to the Editor

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The Dochitect’s Journal: A collection of writings on the intersection of Medicine and Architecture

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