Abstract:
Healthcare means prevention, treatment, and management of illness through the services offered by the medical health professions. While doing research I found that medical errors and hospital-acquired infections are among the leading causes of death in the United States, each killing more Americans than AIDS, breast cancer, or automobile accidents (Institute of Medicine, 2000; 2001). If healthcare is supposed to prevent and treat illnesses then why are all the medical errors and infections taking place?The answer is staffing problems. Registered nurses have a turnover rate averaging 20% (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, 2002). It seems that the people providing the care and well-being of the patients have been overlooked. Widely spaced nursing stations, long shifts, and small break rooms make fatigue, and consequently medical errors, more prevalent. The nursing profession needs to be a more attractive one, or the lack of nurses will continue. Changing the desirableness can start with the workplace environment as a whole.Technology is rapidly changing in the medical field, but our buildings are slow to adjust. This was true until a fairly new idea called "evidence based design"emerged. Evidence based design takes the results and data from patients, as well as staff, and records how they respond to their physical environment. The environment is, in fact, the main part of the treatment for someone with Alzheimer's disease. "Studies have shown that the environment strongly influences the behavior of individuals with Alzheimer's disease and related dementing illnesses, and that well-designed physical environments can maintain and enhance the ability to function and improve quality of life (Brawley)."My thesis is an Alzheimer's patient live-in care facility design. Through my research I have studied how the physical environment can benefit both patient and staff and interpreted it into physical form. Although the project is far from being totally complete, I hope to have made some good insights into the future of elderly living design, for it is my passion.
