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INFRASTRUCTURE
- Sudheera
Mure
furniture leads to discomfort and longer
recovery period and leads to loss of trust on
quality of service offered by the hospital.
What criteria should hospitals look at be-
fore choosing furniture?
Safety is the number one factor. Addition-
ally, one should look at ease of use without
staff assistance, quality, modularity, flex-
ibility, easy to maintain, built to withstand
the rigours of 24/7, optimising patient care
areas' footprint and have breathable fabrics
that offer antimicrobial and stain-resistant
properties and are evidence-based design.
How hospital furniture has evolved over
the years?
With time, hospital furniture has evolved
and contributed towards making healthcare
facilities into more welcoming than inhibit-
ing environment. Every day, healthcare
teams provide tender care, promote health
and wellness while addressing other reali-
ties of healthcare—the demands of chang-
ing demographics, increased consumer
expectations, heightened environmental
concerns while assimilating emergent
technologies.
In response, healthcare construction and
furniture needs are rapidly evolving. The
facilities of yesterday look nothing like the
facilities of today and this surely will look
nothing like facilities of tomorrow.How the design of a few areas likes waiting
room and private rooms have changed?
Earlier, waiting rooms used to look and feel
like holding pens, designed to seat most pa-
tients in as little room as possible, providing
few physical or emotional comforts. And
there was lack of privacy due to chairs lined
up in orderly rows from end to end, pre-
venting patients from being able to look at
one another. Some used to sit, some stand,
but no one looks comfortable.
In present hospitals, these spaces offer a
smooth transition from physical pain and
emotional uncertainty to vital information
and relief. Group seating with integration of
landscape, privacy panels, individual hand
rests makes the patient/ visitor more com-
fortable and no longer waiting periods is as
painful as before.
Earlier, private rooms were modest and
simple areas just catering for patient’s2