Critical Care Design: The Award Winners and Future Trends
Charles D Cadenhead, FAIA, FACHA Senior Principal, WHR Architects, Houston, Texas
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The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) is the leading organisation dedicated to ensuring excellence and consistancy in the practice of critical care. Of its 14,000 membership, there is a hand-full of architect members involved primarily in a 16-year annual design competition co-sponsored since 1992 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) and the American Institute of Architects Academy on Architecture for Health (AIA/AAH).
The objective of this investigative study is to discover themes that correlate with therapeutic and supportive environments as judged by physicians, nurses and architects. It is to use the information from the annual SCCM design competition and perform a comparative data analysis contributing to evidence-based data.
Methods
All SCCM design competition entries are accompanied by a set of forms completed by the ICU submitting. This information provides background data for those judging the design entries related to design approach and concept, construction budgets, type(s) of patients cared for, overall size of the units, and also includes a small scale floor plan of the unit. In addition, the ICU provides a video wall-through with a voice-over description of the unit and the attributes the staff feel are important. The author also toured several winning ICUs, interviewing staff and physicians and photographing the units. This has provided interesting “lessons learned” that are not obvious from the entry information.
Results
The design competition entry data, additional information collected through post-occupancy tours, and architectural plan analysis have yielded interesting comparisons of past SCCM ICU winning designs. The findings compare and contrast planning approach and concept, space program components and areas, social organisation of the unit, architectural layout, configurations and circulation patterns. They reflect changing attitudes to patient and family centered care and accommodations, and attitudes toward facilities for staff in the ICU.
Conclusions
The SCCM design competition offers an exemplary collection of ICUs judged by physicians and nurses that specialize in critical care and by architects that specialise in health facility design. Data collected and analysed from these units offer understanding of historical information on critical care design and offer a guide to possible future trends in this important specialty within medicine and healthcare architecture.
Keywords: ICU, Critical Care, Evidence-Based Design
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