Using design in health: a workshop

Abstract

Design, human factors, and ergonomics have long been used in safety-critical industries. In 2004, the UK Department of Health highlighted the value of design approaches for healthcare settings in its report on Design for Patient Safety (1), and these are now increasingly being introduced into healthcare contexts. Healthcare publications are encouraging the use of the word ‘design’ for health, for example quality by design, safety by design (2) and Design Bugs out. While many of these examples concentrate on equipment, device or architectural space design, work in healthcare service design and process has also begun. In the UK, learning from design-led approaches has led to the Experience-Based Design publication (3). Design approaches have been demonstrated in use to improve healthcare delivery practice and re-designing healthcare services.User-centred Healthcare Design (UCHD www.uchd.org.uk) is a 5-year project within the “South Yorkshire Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care” (SY-CLAHRC), funded by the National Institute for Health Research. SY-CLAHRC is a large scale research collaboration focusing on the challenges of self-care in a range of long term conditions. UCHD brings together health researchers and managers based in the NHS with design and technology researchers at Sheffield Hallam University. Together, our aim is to develop, evaluate, and promote user-centred methods for designing user-centred healthcare services. In particular, to find ways of working within the public health system that will make possible the structural, behavioural and philosophical changes needed to meet these challenges. We work in collaboration with health researchers, healthcare providers, patients, carers and the public to investigate the impact of user-centred methods in healthcare designing, and the challenges faced in adopting such methods within established public health systems.Our experience suggests that nurses are in the perfect position to use their understanding of the context and their close proximity to the patient experience to use such approaches to improve the care they deliver to patients. This may be directly through their clinical practice or by using the approaches from design practice and research to influence their own research methods.This workshop will use User-centred Healthcare Design’s experience of designing in health to showcase approaches that:•\tCapture and use experience to co-design health services•\tUse design tools to think differently•\tUsing virtual methods of engagement and co-designThe workshop will take the form of exemplars from the teams practice followed by practical sessions to allow participants to use the approach within the workshop.The aim of the workshop is to empower nurses to use different approaches inspired and informed by design research and practice in both their research and clinical practice.1. \tDepartment of Health, Design Council. Design for Patient Safety: A system-wide design-led approach to tackling patient safety in the NHS. London: Department of Health Publications; 2003.2. \tTonks A. Safer by design. British Medical Journal. 2008 ;336(7637):186-188.3. \tNIII. Experience Based Design [Internet]. NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement; Available from http://www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_value/introduction/experience_based_design.html: 2009.