While there is no way to eliminate occupational stress completely from any profession, healthcare interior designers can help mitigate its effects by responding to the unique burdens medical professionals face. These design choices can vary—from creating acoustically isolated spaces that allow staff to rest and recharge to providing increased access to daylight and exterior views.
Though there are multiple ways for architects to include design elements that support building occupant wellbeing, interior sliding doors present a practical way to plan a space that works with the specific challenges in the healthcare field to promote wellness.
Acoustically isolated breakrooms
Breakrooms are places where healthcare interior design can support medical staff. For instance, windows that provide views of nature have been cited to reduce stress and feelings of burnout among nurses. But design choices can influence the staff’s mental well-being in many ways. One of which is to keep break areas as separate from work areas as possible.
Doors that provide premium acoustic performance can help stop noise transfer from on-stage areas to off-stage break areas, giving staff a temporary reprieve from their duties. This allows medical professionals time to rest and recharge during working hours.
Both AD Systems’ ExamSlide and OfficeSlide doors offer Noise Isolating Class (NIC) ratings of up to 39, which is higher than most solid core doors. Interior sliding doors can achieve this rating partially through their patented bottom guide and seal. These features can reduce the level of a normal conversation happening on the other side of the door to that of a whisper, ensuring medical professionals can have a quiet space to decompress.
Space-saving design for efficiency
Healthcare interior design often favors floorplans that make efficient use of a building’s square footage. For example, the recently completed renovation of Pacific Medical Centers’ Gately-Ryan Building focused on optimizing interior square footage to improve patient experience. The ExamSlide sliding doors contributed to an easily navigable and more accessible built environment.
In addition to helping patients, efficient design also supports medical professionals. In the Gately-Ryan example, the space-savings that the sliding doors provided allowed the project’s architects to include an extra exam room for every 11 planned. Among other benefits, extra exam rooms translate to easier scheduling for medical assistants, which can reduce the stress they experience behind the scenes.
Further, because sliding doors eliminate swing-arc trajectories, they ensure exam rooms can contain all necessary equipment. Since most equipment is within arm reach, medical professionals can treat patients easier and more efficiently—reducing the stress of finding equipment and prolonging appointments unnecessarily.
Access to natural light and cohesive design
Daylighting has long been touted as one of the most successful ways the built environment can help support occupant wellbeing. Healthcare settings are no exception. Healthcare interior designs that feature exterior windows or skylights can provide patients and staff with access to natural lighting for improved mood and decreased fatigue. However, incorporating natural light into a built environment can be complex and often requires an integrated design approach.
Full-lite sliding doors can support a daylight-optimized building while helping designers achieve a cohesive design. As the Evergreen State College Student Wellness Center shows, these doors can allow a modicum of light to filter in from common areas. They can also create material cohesion between different architectural elements for a more aesthetically pleasing and psychologically supportive design. Able to aid more traditional daylighting systems, full-lite sliding doors can be a part of a whole building approach to design.
Healthcare interior design can support wellbeing
Providing life-saving care will almost always be a stressful career, but research has indicated that a well-planned environment can mitigate feelings of burnout among medical professionals. By carving out spaces for rest, contributing to space-savings and supporting psychological wellness, healthcare interior design can respond to the profession’s unique challenges.
When incorporated into a healthcare setting, sliding doors can be a part of an optimized built environment that works for healthcare staff and not against them.
