Many hospitals are borrowing design strategies from malls and airports to ease patients' navigation and improve their experience, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Design experts call the process of getting around from one place to another "wayfinding," and many hospitals are taking steps to make the modern medical complex less like a maze. Hospitals' confusing layouts are often the result of years of renovations and additions. Signage is not always updated to account for the multiple new entrances, wings and disconnected buildings.
Complex layouts and confusing signage raise patients' anxiety, according to the report, especially since many are feeling ill and are visiting the hospital to undergo tests and procedures.
Here are a few strategies hospitals are adopting, according to the report:
• Signs with technical names for departments, such as "otolaryngology," are getting swapped out for signage with plainer language, such as "ear, nose and throat."
• Cleveland Clinic has interactive kiosks at entrances so patients can print directions or send them to their phones and get an estimated "walk time" from their current location to destination. The system is also developing a wayfinding app for its main campus, which will provide turn-by-turn walking and driving directions.
• Other hospitals are using distinctive landmarks as points of reference to assure people they are on the right path. MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has placed a large sculpture of a tree to mark the way to its diagnostic center, blood donor center, pharmacy and chapel.
• Hospitals are taking cues from airports, which often have incremental signage or "progressive disclosure," according to the report. This means the signs give patients only the information they need to get to the next step in their destination. A sign at the elevator, for example, may direct people to the second floor, which includes all maternity and pediatric departments. Once on that floor, people will see signs with directional arrows to individual departments.
• UCLA Medical Center offers personal escorts at its Ronald Reagan and Santa Monica medical centers. These escorts are college students who are completing internships.
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