Informing hospital design through research on patient experience

Abstract

The material environment impacts on patients’ wellbeing and healing process. In complex and hard-to-enter healthcare settings, architects and other designers have difficulty to collect information about patients' experience; hospital boards and facility managers experience difficulties to approach their familiar environment from a patient perspective. This paper explores how information on patient experience resulting from research in care contexts can be usefully and conveniently translated to designers and healthcare professionals. This should support the development of spaces, products and/or services that seek to improve patient experience. Case studies explore what different stakeholders expect to gain from information on patient experience and how it can be provided in the most valuable way. How the information is presented turns out to be key in how it is used. So far the format was custom-made for each specific case. Further research should investigate how the available experiential information can be disclosed to a wider audience.