Smoothing the path to the theatre

director – health sciences, at London-based Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, at the recent Healthcare Estates conference. Jonathan Baillie reports.

Speaking in Harrogate, US-born Keith Millay, whose 25 year-long career has seen him gain extensive academic, research, and healthcare design and planning expertise, made clear just how important he believes the configuration, throughput, and technical functionality of a hospital’s operating department are to its overall success. However, he was equally firm in another belief: that while very significant emphasis, and indeed media attention, has been devoted to good ward design in recent years, there has been substantially less focus, at least publicly, on how much of a difference to the overall patient experience a really high quality operating theatre environment, and indeed associated admission, waiting, anaesthetic preparation, and recovery rooms, could make to those visiting a hospital for surgery. Nor, he argued, had anything like sufficient discussion taken place on how the “flow” and scheduling of operations might be improved by changes to typical operating department layout and configuration. Whether, for instance, equipping each theatre with its own separate anaesthesia preparation room, or, conversely (as his practice recommends), amalgamating this facility within the theatre, thus at one stroke saving considerable space and eliminating one potentially stressful preoperative “step”, represents the optimum approach, had, he suggested, been hotly debated by healthcare professionals in the UK “for at least the past 7-8 years”. However to date there had been little public focus on the issue, nor on how improving the overall ambience and comfort of associated areas, such as the lounge where patients are prepared prior to surgery, might enhance the hospital visit and reduce patient anxiety. As well as contrasting the markedly different approaches to operating department design in different countries, Keith Millay’s presentation outlined a radically different system developed by Swanke Hayden Connell for configuring the various waiting, assessment, operating, and recovery facilities that the architectural practice believes could easily be adopted both in private, and in future, also in NHS hospitals. The firm believes the system would substantially improve both the patient experience, and the efficiency with which operations are carried out. At its heart is the belief that, with ever higher patient expectations, a highly competitive healthcare marketplace, and ever-more sophisticated theatre technology, there has never been a better opportunity to re-appraise both the design of the operating theatre, and of the adjacent waiting and other spaces.

Already successful in the US