U-REAP Proposal Form.

Recently Thompson Rivers University has been handing out applications for the U-REAP Comprehensive Enhancement Fund, Defined as U-Reap: Undergraduate Student Research Experience Awarwd Program, Providing an oppurtunity for talented undergraduate students to engage in original independant research, scholarship or the production of creative works. Our class was asked to each write up a proposal with the area of our course material. Here is my proposal that I wrote on Hospital dividers. please read and give feed back.




Summary Statement of Proposed Project

This proposal aims to create a new type of living experience for people residing in healthcare facilities. The project will aim to raise the bar of current living conditions for patients by implementing a new type of partition curtain that will bring with it many features to make a patient feel more as if he/she is at home. The project will be designed so that in can be integrated into existing structures and future developments.

Purpose

The Purpose of this proposal is to create a comfortable living environment for long term patients in healthcare facilities. With the physiological well-being of the patients in mind, the project will work towards helping the patients feel as if they are more at home in a healthcare facility. The benefits of a comfortable patient could have a profound effect on the rate at which patients recover. Comfortable patients would also lead to a better working environment for healthcare workers, which could improve the entire moral of a hospital.

Goals and Objectives of the Project

The immediate goal of this project is to create a prototype of the design to show and test at various healthcare facilities and institutions. In order to build the proposed design, data will need to be collected from various sources to determine what features will be needed. First and foremost the testimonies of patients and healthcare workers will play the most important role in the decisions concerning what needs to be included in the design. Building from information collected from testimonies the design will then proceed to be reviewed by experts in different fields of architecture and engineering. With the combined knowledge of experts and other individuals who will be utilizing the product the project aims to be as efficiently designed as possible. Once the prototype is complete and has been tested the ultimate goal for the partition curtain will be to be decrease the waiting lines for hospital beds in British Columbia by providing patients with a more relaxing atmosphere so that they will in-turn recover faster.

Methodology and Analytical Approach

One of the goals for this project is to be efficient and cost effective, so the design will incorporate as many recyclable and renewable resources as possible. The thinking behind the construction of this curtain will be to increase the comfort and privacy in pre-existing care facilities. The curtain will have to be designed so that it can be easily installed within already existing buildings without taking up any more space than is already being used by the patients. The product will not be effective if it takes away from the number of beds already in use as that would be defeating the ultimate goal of providing more available hospital beds. With installation needs defined the next step will be to design the curtain so that it is easily accessible for the emergency needs of healthcare workers. The cloth will be lightweight as well as retractable either from the floor or roof in the case that a bed must be moved. Each part of the project will be designed according to the British Columbia Building Code-


and will work to exceed the minimum standards. One of the biggest concerns for the design of the cloth is that it will have to act as a sound barrier. An in-depth study of acoustics will be done to determine what material will work best for this and how much resistance to sound is acceptable for an average person to comfortably fall asleep. This is where the testimonials of patients and healthcare workers will be utilized in order to achieve the desired conditions. Along with sound, another concern with sleeping conditions is the amount of light in a room. In this new design a lighting system will be incorporated so that the patient has control over a light that will be connected to the curtain itself. This will help the patient decide when he/she sleeps. This will help greatly if someone were to have a late night guest and did not want to bother other sleeping patients within the same room this will now give patients a nights rest closer to what they would experience at their own home. With the combination of these items included in the design for the partition wall the ultimate goal will hopefully be reached, tested, and put to use in hospital across British Columbia.

How Will This Project Fill a Knowledge Gap?

This Project will work closely with people in hospitals in an effort to build a design that will be precisely what is needed for the clients. The curtain it self will push to develop new soundproofing technology that will be mostly made with sustainable and recyclable materials.

Plans for Dissemination of Work

Plans for dissemination of this project will be broken down in the list that follows

• Gather information from healthcare patients and workers.
• Create a design.
• Review work with registered professionals.
• Create a set of concept drawing and a mock up to dispay at institutions.
• Do an acoustic study and determine the best fit material.
• Design and test an application for installing the curtain.
• Build a prototype of the curtain.
• Review prototype with registered professionals.
• Propose design to local healthcare officials.

Welcome!

Hi Everyone and Welcome to my Blog. I have started this blog to research ways to make hospital design more efficient and more comfortable for Patients and Health-care workers. I will be posting new finds each week to show the progress of my work. You can expect drawings, analytical reports, and even some testimonials from people with experience in this field. What I need from you, the readers is comments please! Your thoughts good or bad will help me out a lot on this project, If there are any suggestions for future topics that I can cover please leave them in the comments box and I will try my best to incorporate them in to my posts. Thanks for viewing my page.