Safe and sound

Patient rooms at the CDH Partners-designed WellStar Paulding Hospital, Hiram, Ga., feature bedside charting and medication scanning as well as patient lifts in the bariatric and intensive care unit rooms, and the infrastructure to add lifts in all patient rooms in the future. | Photo © Kieran Reynolds

Because communication and collaboration are essential to patient safety, team workstations at the University of Princeton at Plainsboro (N.J.) are designed to support the number of caregivers on the floor during the course of a day, says Christopher Korsh, senior principal and regional leader, health care, for design firm HOK. | Photo by Paul Rivera Archphoto

Patient rooms at the HOK-designed University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro (N.J.) were tested for a year and a half in “live mock-ups.” | Photo courtesy of Princeton Healthcare System

LEFT: A nurse server and a decentralized work station, placed immediately outside every two patient rooms at Confluence Health – Central Washington Hospital, Wenatchee, enables nurses to spend more time observing patients and less time fetching supplies and patient information. RIGHT: Bariatric rooms in the HDR-designed patient tower include a ceiling-mounted lift able to transfer patients up to 1,000 pounds, with the lift track leading from the patient bed to the bathroom. | Photos courtesy of HDR Architecture, Inc./© 2011 Vance Fox