1,721,009 research outputs found
A Conceptual Visibility Framework for Linking Spatial Metrics With Experience and Organizational Outcomes
No full textVisibility enables or prohibits healthcare professionals' ability to monitor, control, or manage situations in healthcare settings. Visibility has a significant impact on patient safety, including patient fall rates and mortality rates, and on the performance of healthcare professionals, including situational awareness and communication. This article provides a conceptual visibility framework synthesizing visibility analysis models, tools, and metrics. The framework uses four dimensions that capture the experiential phenomena of users, such as visual relationships between specific sets of users/targets, how the orientation of the seeing entity changes visibility patterns, and the unequal visibility levels of seeing and being seen. The framework particularly focuses on how the layout and the resulting patterns of visibility reflect and influence the user experience and organizational functions. By illustrating the similarities and differences of various models in the framework according to the dimensions, this article describes how various visibility analysis models, tools, and metrics can be applied to design and research.
Measuring Interpersonal Visual Relationships in Healthcare Facilities: The Agent Visibility Model and SAVisualPower Tool
No full textVisibility has a significant impact on health-related outcomes and experiences of users in healthcare settings. Built environments determine interpersonal visual relationships between users and control their ability to see (or be seen by) others. Despite this importance, metrics that fully and precisely describe these interpersonal visual relationships are lacking. In this article, we introduce the Agent Visibility Analysis Model and the SAVisualPower software, which enable person-centric visibility analysis for quantifying visual relationships both among users and between users and visual targets. The model precisely captures users' visibility by reflecting the orientation of users and by differentiating visual contents of the users-space, other users, and targets. By providing practical examples of the new model using layouts from previous studies, this article describes specific visibility metrics that can be analyzed by the new tool and how the tool can be applied to design and research in healthcare settings for improved user experiences.
SEAT-CHOOSING BEHAVIORS AND VISIBILITY: A CASE STUDY OF LIBRARY READING ROOMS AS STUDY ENVIRONMENTS
No full textIndividuals choose seats as part of their everyday activities. This study explored seating patterns at a library where students chose their own seats to study individually. The study focused on the visual environments of the library as an extrinsic factor that impacts seat choice. The authors reviewed a year's worth of data, confirming several relationships between seat preferences and visual environments, most notably that seats that gave students a higher likelihood of seeing others while not being seen themselves were selected faster, chosen more often, and occupied longer. The study also provides methodological contributions to the field. It validated the effect of visibility variables by comparing two constructs: visible area and likelihood of visibility. The likelihood-of-visibility variables, namely visual access and visual exposure, showed positive and negative linear trends, respectively, with regard to seat preference. However, the construct of visible area from each seat did not show a linear relationship with seat preference. The authors developed and proposed a new analytical method that reflects the impact of orientation on visual access and exposure. The results of this study suggest that designing spaces to have more seats with low visual exposure and high visual access may enhance overall seat utilization.
The Representational Function of Clinic Design: Staff and Patient Perceptions of Teamwork
No full textObjective: This study empirically investigates the relationships between visibility attributes and both patients' and staff members' teamwork experiences. Background: Teamwork among healthcare professionals is critical for the safety and quality of patient care. While a patient-centered, team-based care approach is promoted in primary care clinics, little is known about how clinic layouts can support the teamwork experiences of staff and patients in team-based primary clinics. Methods: This article measured teamwork perceptions of staff members and patients at four primary care clinics providing team-based care. Visual access to staff workstations from both staff and patient perspectives was analyzed using VisualPower tool(version 21). The relationships between teamwork perception and visibility attributes were analyzed for each entity: staff members and patients. Results: The results showed that the visual relationships among staff members and those between staff members and patients have significant associations with overall perceptions of teamwork. While clinics providing more visual connections between staff workstations reported higher teamwork perception of staff members, patient perceptions of staff teamwork were inversely related to the number of visual connections between patients and staff workstations. Conclusions: The findings of the study provide implications for designing team-based primary care clinics to enhance the teamwork experience of both staff members and patients, which is also applicable to teamwork perceptions in other settings where both inhabitants and visitors are main user groups of the spaces. This study illustrates the representational function of space: Organizations can emphasize their values via layout design by regulating what they show to inhabitants or visitors.
Backstage Staff Communication: The Effects of Different Levels of Visual Exposure to Patients
No full textObjective: This article examines how visual exposure to patients predicts patient-related communication among staff members. Background: Communication among healthcare professionals private from patients, or backstage communication, is critical for staff teamwork and patient care. While patients and visitors are a core group of users in healthcare settings, not much attention has been given to how patients' presence impacts staff communication. Furthermore, many healthcare facilities provide team spaces for improved staff teamwork, but the privacy levels of team areas significantly vary. Method: This article presents an empirical study of four team-based primary care clinics where staff communication and teamwork are important. Visual exposure levels of the clinics were analyzed, and their relationships to staff members' concerns for having backstage communication, including preferred and nonpreferred locations for backstage communication, were investigated. Results: Staff members in clinics with less visual exposure to patients reported lower concerns about having backstage communication. Staff members preferred talking in team areas that were visually less exposed to patients in the clinic, but, within team areas, the level of visual exposure did not matter. On the other hand, staff members did not prefer talking in visually exposed areas such as corridors in the clinic and visually exposed areas within team spaces. Conclusions: Staff members preferred talking in team areas, and they did not prefer talking in visually exposed areas. These findings identified visually exposed team areas as a potentially uncomfortable environment, with a lack of agreement between staff members' preferences toward where they had patient-related communication.
The impact of clinic design on teamwork development in primary care
No full textBackground Traditional clinic design supports a high-volume, hierarchical practice model. New design models are evolving to foster a high-functioning team delivery model. Purpose The goal of this study was to determine whether new design models, specifically colocation, improve care team development. Methodology/Approach A quasi-experimental design was used in this study to obtain validated teamwork development scores and patient satisfaction data to compare clinic design models. We took advantage of a difference in designs of primary care clinics among several clinics within the same care system in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. The participants were staff members of the primary care delivery teams in the studied clinics. The intervention was a redesign of staff space in the clinic. Our measures included a validated measure of team development and a commonly used patient satisfaction tool that were both in use at our institution at the time of the study. Results Teamwork scores were significantly higher in clinics where the primary work space of the entire team was colocated than in clinics where providers were in spaces separate from other team members. The differences in scores held across team roles, including providers, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses. Patient satisfaction was not different. Conclusion Colocation in clinic design appears to have a significant impact on team development across primary care team member roles. Practice Implications Primary care practice leaders should consider colocated clinic designs if their goal is to optimize care team development in support of team-based care delivery models. A more precise understanding of colocation that includes aspects such as distance to and visibility to teammates might help improve design in the future.
Spatial Influences on Team Awareness and Communication in Two Outpatient Clinics: a Multiple Methods Study
No full textBackground Healthcare organizations are moving their primary care teams out of private offices into shared workspaces for many reasons, including teamwork improvement and cost reduction. Objective Identify the specific aspects of layout and design that enable two fundamental processes of high-functioning teams: communication and situation awareness. Design This was a multi-method study employing qualitative interviews, floor plan analysis, observations, behavior mapping, and surveys. Participants Two primary care clinics in a large, integrated healthcare system in the upper Midwest, with Clinic S in a suburban location and Clinic A in a rural setting. In the two clinics, a total of 36 staff members were interviewed, 57 (66% response rate) staff members were surveyed, and 2013 individual-points were recorded during 63 behavior mapping observations. Main Measures Communication encounters, team members' perception of the environment and teamwork, visibility, distance, functional pathways, and self-reported mode and frequency of staff communication. Key Results Observations, interviews, and surveys identified environmental factors that predict staff awareness and communication patterns. Visibility impacts situation awareness. Frequency of face-to-face communication increases with visibility and proximity between workstations (e.g., Clinic A nurses' intra-role communication without workstation proximity vs inter-role communication with workstation proximity: 22.6% [11.4, 33.9] vs 77.4% [66.1, 88.6], p = 0.001) and with staff members' functional paths. Visual exposure to patients predicts staff's concerns about their communication (Clinic S: 2.29 +/- 0.81 vs Clinic A: 3.20 +/- 0.84, p < 0.001). Conclusions Design and layout of team spaces have important influences on the way that team members work together. The organizational goals of the healthcare system, particularly which staff members need to work together most frequently, should drive the specific design solution.
Research Horizons [Volume 19, Number 2, Winter 2002]
No full textResponding to Terrorism: The First Response - Researchers develop technologies to help rescue workers improve response in a chemical or biological attack.Implications for the War on Terrorism -
International affairs experts offer perspectives on foreign policy, homeland defense, vulnerabilities, ethics and European allies.Building Vulnerability Science -
Terrorism may change the way buildings are designed.Damage Assessment Around Ground Zero -
A Georgia Tech professor's advanced digital data system is expediting damage analyses in New York.Understanding DNA Damage -
Study suggests the environment surrounding DNA is a key to controlling charge transport and damage.A Model Environment -
Numerical models help hydropower industry reduce fish injury and improve water quality.Speed Racers -
Study will monitor driver behavior to determine the role of speed in crashes.A Step Toward "Atom Fiber Optics" -
World's smallest atom storage ring is first to guide ultra-cold neutral atoms.FACULTY PROFILE: A Passion for Success -
Regents Researcher Krishan Ahuja attributes his success to luck, but that's just another name for hard work
Designing for Effective and Safe Multidisciplinary Primary Care Teamwork: Using the Time of COVID-19 as a Case Study
No full textEffective medical teamwork can improve the effectiveness and experience of care for staff and patients, including safety. Healthcare organizations, and especially primary care clinics, have sought to improve medical teamwork through improved layout and design, moving staff into shared multidisciplinary team rooms. While co-locating staff has been shown to increase communication, successful designs balance four teamwork needs: face-to-face communications; situational awareness; heads-down work; perception of teamness. However, precautions for COVID-19 make it more difficult to conduct face-to-face communications. In this paper we describe a model for understanding how layout affects these four teamwork needs and describe how the perception of teamwork by staff changed after COVID-19 precautions were put in place. Observations, interviews and two standard surveys were conducted in two primary care clinics before COVID-19 and again in 2021 after a year of precautions. In general, staff felt more isolated and found it more difficult to conduct brief consults, though these perceptions varied by role. RNs, who spent more time on the phone, found it convenient to work part time-from home, while medical assistants found it more difficult to find providers in the distanced clinics. These cases suggest some important considerations for future clinic designs, including greater physical transparency that also allow for physical separation and more spaces for informal communication that are distanced from workstations
Hospitality and visibility in domestic space : an analysis of visual separation between men's and women's domains of domestic space in Riyadh
No full textPh.D
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