Transitioning to a New Facility: The Crucial Role of Employee Engagement.

Transitioning to a new facility can be challenging for employees and detrimental to operations. A key aspect of the transition is employee understanding of, and involvement in, the design of the new facility. The literature lacks a comprehensive study of the impact of change engagement throughout the design, construction, and activation of a project as well as how that can affect perceptions, expectations, and, eventually, satisfaction of employees.

A Value Analysis of Lean Processes in Target Value Design and Integrated Project Delivery.

Objective: To investigate what key stakeholders consider to be the advantages and the opportunities for improvement in using lean thinking and tools in the integrated project delivery (IPD) process.

Method: A detailed literature review was followed by case study of a Lean-IPD project. Interviews with members of the project leadership team, focus groups with the integrated team as well as the design team, and an online survey of all stakeholders were conducted.

A Review of Design and Policy Interventions to Promote Nurses' Restorative Breaks in Health Care Workplaces.

The nursing profession in the United States is on the precipice of a crisis. Nurses are essential to the health care industry, and maintaining quality nursing care is a primary concern of today's health care managers. Health care facilities report high rates of staff burnout and turnover, and interest in the nursing profession among younger students is declining.

The implications of high-quality staff break areas for nurses' health, performance, job satisfaction and retention.

Aim: The main study objective was to explore policy and design factors contributing to nurses' perception of how well-designed staff break areas can play an important beneficial role in relation to their overall job satisfaction, retention, performance and job-related health concerns.

Background: Nurses are extremely valuable to the healthcare industry; however, today's nursing profession is challenged by nurses' fatigue and its negative consequences on nurses' health and the quality of patient care they provide.

Methods: Preliminary interviews were conducted with 10 nurses who worked as consultants in the healthcare design and construction industry.

Restorative Design Features for Hospital Staff Break Areas: A Multi-Method Study.

Objectives: The study investigated the main restorative components of staff break areas in healthcare facilities, by assessing usage patterns, verbal/visual preferences, and perceived restorative qualities of specific design features found in break areas for hospital staff.

Background: Nurses are extremely important to the healthcare industry, and maintaining the quality of nursing care is a central concern for healthcare administrators. While healthcare leaders are concerned about improving nurses' satisfaction, performance, and job retention, they may overlook the importance of respite for nurses and underestimate the value of designing staff break areas to maximize their restorative potential.

Field Research and Parametric Analysis in a Medical-Surgical Unit.

Objective: To study the workplace in a medical-surgical (med-surg) unit and to identify suboptimal environmental conditions that can be improved in the current unit and avoided in future design, through rapidly deployed field research and timely simulation.

Background: Literature emphasizes the importance of the healthcare workplace and the effect on patient outcomes. What is lacking are studies conducted on-site and used for immediate application in design to assess and improve workplace conditions.

The Seniors' Outdoor Survey: An Observational Tool for Assessing Outdoor Environments at Long-Term Care Settings.

Purpose Of The Study: To describe the development and psychometric testing of the Seniors' Outdoor Survey (SOS), an instrument for evaluating how well the outdoor space in a long-term care setting supports the preferences and outdoor usage of residents.

Design And Methods: Content validity of the main SOS items initially was based on relevant literature and preliminary studies in diverse long-term care settings. After conducting a multiregional pilot study with 152 outdoor spaces at 68 assisted living facilities, the instrument was substantially revised and tested for interrater and test-retest reliability with 22 outdoor spaces at 12 long-term care settings, using 2 raters.