18th Nov 11
Free WiFi would relax A&E patients
by Harry Oldfield
Poor health: 40 assaults per day on hospital staff last year
Poor health: 40 assaults per day on hospital staff last year
Offering patients in accident and emergency waiting rooms free WiFi would reduce the number of violent and aggressive incidents, designers have said.
It would ensure potentially disruptive patients have the tools to occupy themselves, according to experts behind a successful bid to redesign three hospital trusts’ accident and emergency waiting rooms.
Other ideas include installing soft surfaces in the place of hard ones, as noise is said to heighten stress in adult patients, and using more natural lighting as it has been proven to increase feelings of wellbeing. Nature views – whether of framed pictures or outside space – promote stress recovery, but experts say that abstract artwork should not be used.
Designers were asked to come up with ways to help ensure the experience of waiting in A&E at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital in London, Chesterfield Hospital and Southampton Hospital are more pleasant. So far, the Department of Health has invested £150,000 in the scheme in the hope of reducing the amount of attacks of staff.
In 2010, there were 36 physical assaults per day on employees at general hospitals, revealed an NHS survey. Around 50 per cent result from flare-ups in usually calm, but momentarily frustrated, individuals. The problem is said to cost £69m a year for the NHS. Officials from the Department of Health stipulated that ideas need to be cheap and easy in order so they can be introduced to any A&E without requiring large-scale redesigns.
Other ideas from the PearsonLloyd group, the London design studio which won the contest, include avoiding placing seats opposite each other in order to prevent confrontational situations which could lead to aggression or violence, and installing digital screens to advise patients in the waiting room of how busy the hospital is.
In addition, they should be given easy-to-understand instructions on procedures when they enter the department. Instead of receptionists sitting behind screens, there should be more open-plan layouts to avoid a mentality of ‘them and us’, advised the designers.
The Royal London Hospital’s A&E consultant Dr David Wise said that aggression and violence is tolerated in A&E waiting rooms as it has become so common and, therefore, some perceive it as simply being the norm and part of the tapestry.
However, he went on to say that the Design Council initiative has brought new minds to the issue, not affected by the behavioural and intellectual baggage which the norms represent. He added that it is very apparent that aggression and violence in A&E departments is not acceptable and that it is possible to reduce it.
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