Backstage Staff Communication: The Effects of Different Levels of Visual Exposure to Patients, Health Environments Research & Design Journal
ARTICLE
Evidence-Based Design Journal Clubs are formatted for 15-minute presentations and 45-minutes of discussion to provide an opportunity for attendees to interact with authors who recently published EBD papers or articles in peer-reviewed journals such as HERD. Learn as they share ways to put their research into practice.
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Backstage Staff Communication: The Effects of Different Levels of Visual Exposure to Patients
Objective: 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' preference toward where they had patient-related communication.
Lisa Lim, PhD, Assistant Professor, College of Architecture, Texas Tech University
Lisa Lim is a researcher, designer, and educator at Texas Tech University with the primary focus of improving health and wellness of users through design. She received her Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Science in Architecture from Seoul National University, and her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Lim is interested in how spatial layouts can support individual experience and organizational outcomes and how designers can provide such environments. With her academic and practical architectural background, she has expertise on analytical and empirical approaches for understanding both space and the people in it.
Craig Zimring, PhD, Director, SimTigrate Design Lab, Georgia Tech University
An environmental psychologist and professor of architecture, Craig Zimring directs Georgia Tech SimTigrate Design Lab. A developer of the field of evidence-based design of healthcare with more than 125 scholarly and professional publications, his research focuses on understanding the relationships between the physical environment and human satisfaction, performance and behavior, focusing on settings where design impacts people at the most important times of their lives and where technical and social change provides opportunities for innovation. He has served on the board of several organizations including the Center for Health Design. He has won 10 awards for his research.
Robert Stroebel, MD, General Internist, Division of Primary Care Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic Rochester and an Associate Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
Robert Stroebel is general internist in the Division of Primary Care Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic Rochester and an Associate Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Dr. Stroebel has practiced Internal Medicine for the past 25 years with a career focus in practice redesign. He currently serves as Board Chair and Chief Medical Officer of the Mayo Clinic Community Accountable Care Organization.
Host: Kati Peditto, PhD, EDAC, Assistant Professor - Human Factors, Dept. of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, U.S. Air Force Academy
Kati Peditto, PhD, EDAC is an environmental psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Air Force Academy. She received her PhD in Human Behavior and Design from Cornell University and completed postdoctoral training under Dr. Mardelle Shepley. Her research focuses on providing equitable health environments for adolescents and young adults, ranging from pediatric cancer facilities to college health centers. She is the recipient of the 2018 New Investigator Award from The Center for Health Design, and a 2018 AIA-AAH Tuttle Fellow in Health Facility Planning and Design.