The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic: how have immunology societies contributed?

The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a spotlight on the field of immunology like never before. To appreciate the diverse ways in which immunologists have contributed, Nature Reviews Immunology invited the president of the International Union of Immunological Societies and the presidents of 15 other national immunology societies to discuss how they and their members responded following the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

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.

Identification of Tools and Techniques to Enhance Interdisciplinary Collaboration During Design and Construction Projects.

The purpose of this study was to collect the perceptions of design professionals and clinicians regarding design process success strategies and elements of interprofessional engagement and communication during healthcare design and construction projects. Additional objectives were to gather best practices to maximize clinician engagement and provide tools and techniques to improve interdisciplinary collaboration for future projects. Strategies are needed to enhance the design and construction process and create interactions that benefit not only the project but the individuals working to see its completion.

Patient room considerations in the intensive care unit: caregiver, patient, family.

The Patient Room is one of the most important and costly rooms in the design of an inpatient bed unit. As a result, the patient room mock-up requires knowledge of the components that inform the patient room environment. This article provides the intensive care nurse with questions about patient care processes and unit policies that should be considered in a mock-up.

It takes teamwork... the role of nurses in ICU design.

The changing economic environment in health care is pushing the health care construction industry to produce facilities which support improvements in patient care, patient experience, patient safety, staff satisfaction, and financial outcomes. The successful design, construction, and operation of a new or renovated intensive care unit (ICU) requires the participation of intensive care nurses to achieve success. A partnership between the architect and nurse, definition of the desired operational processes, and knowledge of evidence-based design are the foundations of good design.

Factors impeding flexible inpatient unit design.

Objective: To identify and examine factors extraneous to the design decision-making process that could impede the optimization of flexibility on inpatient units.

Background: A 2006 empirical study to identify domains of design decisions that affect flexibility on inpatient units found some indication in the context of the acuity-adaptable operational model that factors extraneous to the design process could have negatively influenced the successful implementation of the model. This raised questions regarding extraneous factors that might influence the successful optimization of flexibility.

The biomechanics of patient room standardization.

Background: The prevailing focus on cognitive load reduction in healthcare environment standardization excludes a domain of healthcare delivery that could contribute significantly to safety and efficiency through standardization, but it has escaped discussion in the context of the biomechanics of care delivery. Inappropriate biomechanics not only can harm caregivers but compromise care delivery. Little, however, is known regarding the biomechanics of patient care and the way it interacts with the configurational issues typically targeted in healthcare environment standardization.

Understanding family requirements in the intensive care room.

This article explores how the built environment can promote family interaction in the intensive care room and how the family can be supported within the room to care for their loved one. Four families with children in the intensive care unit were interviewed about their intensive care room environment. Patient care and the diagnosis and treatment of the child were not discussed.

An empirical examination of patient room handedness in acute medical-surgical settings.

Objective: The study objective was to examine whether standardized same-handed room configurations contribute more to operational performance in comparison to standardized mirror-image room configurations. Based on a framework that physical environment standardization supports process and workflow standardization, thus contributing to safety and efficiency, the study examined the comparative effectiveness of the standardized same-handed configuration and the standardized mirror-image configuration.

Background: Patient room handedness has emerged as an important issue in inpatient unit design, with many hospitals adopting the standardized same-handed room concept at all levels of patient acuity.

A multidimensional framework for assessing patient room configurations.

Purpose: A framework for multidimensional assessment of patient room configurations is presented. Twenty-three issues are considered and categorized under six domains of assessment: (1) patient safety, (2) staff efficiency, (3) circulation, (4) infection control, (5) patient considerations, and (6) family amenities. Use of the framework to rank issues by importance and assess six alternative patient room configurations by a diverse group of experts in a symposium is described.

An exploratory examination of medical gas booms versus traditional headwalls in intensive care unit design.

Should power, medical gases, and monitoring and communications systems be located in a headwall or a ceiling-mounted boom in intensive care unit (ICU) rooms? Often, only the financial costs could be determined for the options, whereas data regarding its potential influence on teamwork, safety, and efficiency are lacking. Hence, purchase decisions are more arbitrary than evidence based. This study simulated care delivery in settings with a traditional headwall and a ceiling boom.