Paper
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Acuity-Adaptable: Patient Room of the Future
Nena M. Bonuel, MSN, RN, CCRN, Center for Professional Excellence, The Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX, USA and Sandra K. Cesario, RNC, PhD, College of Nursing, Texas Woman's University, Houston, TX, USA.
| Learning Objective #1: 1. Describe the patient room of the future. |
| Learning Objective #2: 2. Discuss key elements of evidence-based healthcare design concepts that support the patient room of the future. |
The patient of the future has advance age, sicker with co-morbidity, obese, ethnically diverse, internet connected, educated, more informed and with higher expectation. The patient role is changing from a passive dependent recipient of care to an active autonomous participant. Demographic trend in the US showed that there are more boomers and fewer nurses. Imbedded in this group of boomers are nurses since the average age of nurses is 47. There are fewer young people entering the profession. By 2020, there is 20% shortfall between the nurses required to do the job and the nurses available to do the job. The problem is compounded by payers continually forcing the hospital to reduce the length of stay. Healthcare providers need to deliver a more intense care in an abbreviated span of time. Critical care patients will increase from 10%-13% to 20% -30% in the future.
To provide service to the higher acuity patients, with shortage of nurses, skill mix challenges, aging workforce, it is recognize that facilities, infrastructure, and technology should be flexible and adaptable to change than ever before. Today’s patient room may be tomorrow’s intensive care unit, so built-in flexibility in patient room design is becoming more crucial. This educational activity will review key evidence-based healthcare design concepts that will support the patient room of the future such as use of private room with zones for patient, families and staff, healing environment, technology and decentralized nurses’ stations that can be build through transdisciplinary collaboration. A futuristic room design developed by doctoral nursing students who attended a design workshop will be reviewed. One possibility for the future of healthcare will be shared.