Seminar on better hospital design

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33155, 20 February 1973, Page 14

Seminar on better hospital design

More efficient hospital design is the aim underlying a one-day seminar in Christchurch today which will be attended by representatives of eight hospital boards and members of the Health Department's hospital design and evaluation unit.

The boards concerned are those which are planning new wards, or new accident and emergency departments—the new name for “casualty” departments The seminar will study the work of the design and evaluation unit on such departments. The unit has. m the last 15 months, made a major study of the design of acute general wards, and another on the design of accident and emergency departments. Members of the unit have spent both days and nights in wards and accident departments observing activities, and recording the effects of design on “traffic flow.” the distances nurses have to travel. and efficiency generally The unit’s job is to prepare guidelines on the design of buildings suitable for specific hospital use. Today’s seminar will be attended by medical nursing administrative and architectural representatives of the North and South Canterbury. Ashburton. Nelson. Otago. Southland. Waitak’ and West)an'i hospital hoards. The principal medical offi cer of the design and evaluation unit (Dr T. Lawrie) said yesterday that the unit's

study of general wards had been distributed to hospital boards, but the accident department study was not yet completely finished, and the general principles involved in it should be discussed a: the seminar today. The unit wanted to obtain the reactions of those invol ved in hospital planning, he said, and the number attending the seminar had been kept down to about 40 to allow free discussion. The unit particularly wanted to find the type of information most useful to boards in the search for more efficient hospital building, he said. Dr Lawrie said the method of studying hospital wards would be described to the seminar. All nurses’ move rnents in a particular ward were studied for 24 hour-, he said, and at the same time facilities were studied and a record made of such supporting services as food supplies and linen disposal Diagrams were construe ted to show traffic flow and most used areas of wards. Distances the nurses had to travel gave an indication of good or bad design, he said. 1