Modern hospitals face a design challenge, according to Neel Shah, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Boston-based Harvard Medical School, and director of the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs.
Providers have moved beyond prescribing bedrest as the default in care — now hospitals have to shift their focus on beds to encourage patient mobility. "Currently, very few hospital spaces are designed with the assumption that most of our patients need to walk to be healthier," Dr. Shah wrote in an article for Politico.
Not only is hospital design not explicitly conducive to patient mobility, it's often prohibitive. It's hard for patients to walk down hospital halls, avoiding physicians, nurses and carts, Dr. Shah wrote. Yet studies show outcomes improve when patients walk after surgery. Dr. Shah's own research on labor and delivery units showed birthing units designed with more space for patients to "labor walk" were associated with fewer C-sections.
Some hospitals have started incorporating more space for patients to walk on trails or spend time in healing gardens, helping put less emphasis on the bed. Other sites of care, such as ambulatory surgery centers, which send patients home the same day of surgery, further promote this cause. However, cost and culture barriers mean large-scale redesign is unlikely to happen anytime soon, according to Dr. Shah.
"The more we know about healing, the more it appears that healthcare spaces will need a different approach — one that sometimes looks more like a park than a long fluorescent hallway full of beds," he wrote.
Read Dr. Shah's full column here.
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