Revolutionizing Healthcare Navigation: Enhancing Patient, Visitor, and Staff Experience

RESEARCH PROJECT NAME:

Enhancing the Healthcare Experience through Improved Wayfinding

Download Full Report?

OVERVIEW

To address potential areas for improvement in healthcare settings, we conducted a thorough review of third-party research focusing on wayfinding strategies. Based on our findings, we developed hypotheses that strategic interventions could significantly enhance the patient, visitor, and staff experience by optimizing wayfinding systems. We then surveyed over 25 healthcare professionals to validate these hypotheses. The insights gathered through surveys and additional research were instrumental in creating The Value of Comprehensive Wayfinding in Healthcare, a comprehensive guide for hospital administrators, planners, and architectural designers ming to develop best-in-class hospital navigation systems.

THE CONTEXT

Healthcare environments are typically vast and intricate, often visited infrequently by patients and visitors who may be experiencing physical or emotional distress. Hospitals traditionally prioritize the efficiency of medical care delivery over improving the visitor experience. Consequently, wayfinding receives inadequate attention and resources, which can lead to discrepancies between service quality and overall satisfaction levelspotentially resulting in negative experiences that impact patient outcomes.

Increasing competition among hospitals has led to a heightened focus on differentiating themselves by improving both medical care and the broader healthcare experience. This includes enhancing wayfinding systems as a key component of the patient journey.

THE FINDINGS

Our research underscores the pivotal role of wayfinding in healthcare settings:

• 95 of respondents deemed effective wayfinding extremely important for patients and visitors.

• Well-executed wayfinding strategies are shown to alleviate stress, reinforce institutional identity, and enhance operational efficiency.

• However, many healthcare facilities fall short, with 65 of surveyed professionals rating the current wayfinding as worse than the medical care provided.

This discrepancy negatively affects both patient satisfaction and perceptions within communities.

BASIC INTERVENTIONS FOR WAYFINDING

Priorities include foundational elements such as signage, naming conventions, pathways, entrances, and landmarks. Existing hospitals often overlook these basics, leading to ineffective navigation ds that confuse users.

Once basic improvements are in place, integrated systemscombining factors staff trning with physical elements like signs and digital components like appscan significantly enhance the overall experience by providing seamless guidance for all user types.

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO WAYFINDING

The most successful wayfinding systems are multidimensional, catering to diverse users' needs throughout their journey. They promote indepence through intuitive interfaces that facilitate mental mapping, making navigation easier and more reassuring.

IMPACT AND NEXT STEPS

Investing in comprehensive wayfinding can:

1. Reduce patient stress by simplifying the navigation process.

2. Improve operational efficiency for staff workflows.

3. Enhance confidence and well-being among patients and visitors.

STRATEGIES FOR WAYFINDING IMPROVEMENTS:

• Make destination points easily identifiable with clear signage that avoids medical jargon.

• Use distinctive design cues to highlight important locations, like unique entryways or recognizable landmarks.

• Clearly mark pathways using creative naming signs, directional markers, graphics, and view corridors for reorientation support.

INTEGRATING MULTIPLE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS:

• Incorporate various modes of communicationvisual, verbal, digitalto create an optimal wayfinding strategy that supports users at different levels of navigation proficiency.

FUTURE FOCUS AND GUIDANCE

The Value of Comprehensive Wayfinding in Healthcare serves as a foundational resource for designing or refreshing wayfinding systems. It provides a step-by-step and basic tools to ensure user-centered approaches are integrated early in the design process, whether for new constructions or renovations.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Please reach out to Gensler's research team with any questions or additional inquiries about enhancing healthcare environments through improved navigation strategies.

REFERENCES

Barbara Bouza, Elizabeth Brink, Gretchen Bustillos, Stephen Kellogg, Pia Sachleben, Amy Siegel 2016

Thank you for considering our research on enhancing the healthcare experience through strategic wayfinding improvements.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.gensler.com/gri/an-easier-hospital-1

Please indicate when reprinting from: https://www.89vf.com/Signage_identification_guidance_system/Enhancing_Healthcare_Wayfinding_EXPERIENCE.html