The Patient Voice: Can We Hear It?

Are healthcare facility designs being informed from the patient perspective?

That’s to say, are patients who have experienced a slip, trip or fall in a hospital asked what would have helped them avoid that event?  Are responses to these types of questions being captured in a way that will allow us to generate a collective patient experience? 

How are the answers to these questions making their way to the table during a design project?  And if we focus in on the patient experience during this period of massive healthcare construction, who is considering the interim patient experience during a multi-year construction project when the hospital setting itself consists of noise, detours, disruptions and general chaos?

These were some of the questions that came up in a recent conversation I had with Laura Ellington.  I first met Laura when she was a Director at The Center for Health Design.   Now, she’s working as a consultant to the healthcare industry addressing these issues and defining a unique role for a patient advocate related to the design and construction process. 

I agreed to help Laura identify how the patient voice has traditionally been represented (or not represented) during a healthcare design and construction project by asking you, my readers, for your insight. 

Please direct your experiences, observations or comments to laura_ellington@yahoo.com The feedback received will be shared in a future blog post.