The Live Well Collaborative and the College of Nursing are working together to Re-Design Patient Surfaces & Spaces.
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The Live Well Collaborative, through an exciting collaboration with UC’s College of Nursing, is working with a team of industrial design students to research & innovate within patient care environments. This speci cally includes evaluating furniture in the space to design products that better meet patient needs. All within a 10-week time frame, this project is focused on developing prototypes to either enhance or replace the traditional bedside and overbed tables used in hospitals, long-term care facilities and the home.
Today’s hospital room is very similar to the one of 50 years ago and there has been little change over the past decades in terms of innovation. It is as though we have come to accept status quo even though clinicians and nurses consistently nd patient spaces and surfaces to be inadequate.
“Sometimes the best way to learn is by experiencing it. We set-up the simulation exercise in the College of Nursing’s skill lab which is fully furnished and allows students to experience health care simulations using medical equipment, supplies, hospital beds and other types of furniture.”
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Early on in the research process, Dr. Cynthia Cook, Associate Dean of Research with the College of Nursing, coordinated a simulation experience for the design students to gain rst-hand experience with the frustrations and barriers that both medical staff and patients encounter when using bedside tables.
In the Spring Quarter of 2009, the LWC collaborated with UC faculty and students from the Colleges of Nursing, Business, and DAAP as well as the Hill-Rom Corporation to redesign hospital gowns. Currently the prototypes are being shown to select hospitals across the country to discuss potential adoption of the new gowns.
The current ‘Bedside Buddy’ project will conclude in December, when a cross-functional panel of design and health care professionals will assess the end results. This project is one of three in a series of projects underway between UC College of Nursing and the LWC.
Charles Puchta and Evelyn Fitzwater of the College of Nursing’s Center for Aging with Dignity have also been instrumental in familiarizing students with patient and residential care environments, explaining issues and challenges that the proposed designs must overcome. Steve Doehler, Industrial Design faculty at DAAP, is the instructor of the project with Brooke Brandewie , ‘08 DAAP Product Development graduate and the lead Design Researcher for the LWC working on the project.
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P&G honors UC, others, for shared innovations
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