By Healthcare Facilities Today

In a recent blog on the magazine's website, Healthcare Design's editor-in-chief, Kristin D. Zeit, contemplated a quote she read in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We are all children in the face of illness - scared, ignorant, and impulsive - and we should be treated as such.”

The author of the letter, Mark Attiah, a student at Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, said adult acute care facilities should look to children’s hospitals for design standards. According to the blog, Attiah was inspired to write after rotations at both adult and children's facilities. 

The kinds of elements he encourages - warm and cheerful lighting, family-centered spaces, single patient rooms - aren’t new to the healthcare design audience, Zeit said.

Zeit said she was struck by a story that the author shared about a young woman with a severe chronic disease that necessitated long hospital stays on a regular basis. First diagnosed at age 17, she began getting treatment at adult facilities when she turned 18. The different was striking - in the facilities and the attitudes of the staff.

“It was unpleasant,” she said.

The young woman's story puts a face on the idea that patients, family, and caregivers are all left wanting when the care environment doesn’t support them in a truly human way, Zeit said.

Read the blog.