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.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
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7 comments:
I think your proposal sounds very interesting Bert. I was doing some research about the sound resistant curtain walls and came across this website http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/acoustical_drapery/acoustical_curtains.htm
It may be worth while looking into this site or sending them an email to find out more about there product.
Your project reminds me of a design by some former classmates of mine for a flaxible partition wall: http://www.unicahome.com/p17121/molo/paper-softwall-by-forsythe-and-macallen-for-molo.html
I am not sure that this is relevant to a hospital, but it sure looks cool. Maybe something like this could be made out of a more durable, hygienic material?
Thanks Dave and Dale both those links have helped me a lot. I'm going to post both These on my blog, I think they will help people visualize what I'm trying to design. Dale I'm thinking of using recycled cardboard as a wall material. Do you have any ideas on how this will work?
I have benefited from climate change during an environment change. A wet environment was hurting my back so much, but I fixed the issue by moving to a drier climate. I know this is the case for many eldery people with arthritis also. So location is key. Drier places like Kelowna are ideal for healthcare in my opinion. Hope that might help you out a bit. My wife is in the healthcare industry, perhaps she can answer some questions for you. Call me if you need any questions answered.
Thanks Chris good to know, yeah ill have to talk to your wife one these days and see if she has any ideas.
Hi Bert,
Interesting concept. Being a former health care employee, I wonder about 2 things:
I wonder about the application of an acoustically designed curtain for a hospital setting? Perhaps it would work well on the wards but I wonder about places like ICU and Emergency. I was never a nurse, but it is my impression that nurses with way too many patients, as is the case in our current healthcare system, might rely on being able to moniter their patients in areas like emergency by being able to hear if they are in distress. Often they will purposely leave the curtain open so they can easily see their patients to moniter them. (This is the same reason they wake you up to give you a sleeping pill, they are less concerned about your sleep and more concerned about your illness.)
The other thing I wanted to suggest is that often wait times in hospitals are more of a reflection of low staffing levels than not enough beds. Although not always, but in some hospitals, beds and wards sit empty because they only allow so many patients per nurse. So this might also be something to think about.
Hope this helps, feel free to ask me any healthcare related questions, mabe I can be a resource for you.
Regards,
Jody
Thanks Jody that was a lot of very useful information. I have thought of the needs of an emergency room and the restrictions there is design something that can be accessed easily. Do you know if this type of thing is in the building code?
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