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Helping people to safely navigate hospitals during COVID-19
In response to COVID-19, hospitals needed to make swift changes to their physical environments and usual protocols in order to minimize infection risk. HHF helped Princess Margaret hospital manage patient flow in the early days of the pandemic with a service design approach to wayfinding and screening booth design.
Client
University Health Network
In Collaboration With
University Health Network’s Pandemic Screening and Patient Experience teams
Service Design, Environment and Workflow Design, Communications Design
Challenge
The COVID-19 pandemic required hospitals to rapidly rethink their approach to patient and visitor flow as they became high-risk sites for potential exposure to infection. Amidst constantly shifting understandings of a new virus and concerns around appropriate distancing measures and personal protective equipment, Princess Margaret hospital needed to control movement within the hospital to mitigate risks to patients and staff. HHF was approached to design wayfinding and other necessary interventions to help optimize patient flow during this difficult time.
Process
Discovery
Early in the process, we identified that the changes required to keep patients and staff safe were too drastic to be managed with signage alone. Behaviours that were new at the time, such as physical distancing, mandatory hand sanitization, universal masking, and symptom screening of large crowds during peak hours, would require us to consider the patient’s entire journey from finding out about their appointment to walking out of the hospital doors. With this in mind, we brought together a team of cross-disciplinary stakeholders, conducted hospital walk-throughs, shadowed staff and observed the flow of patients in all critical areas of the hospital to uncover opportunities to improve the experience and ensure safety.
Signage alone would not be effective without a service design approach to manage the implementation of changes to the physical environment.
What We Discovered
There were 6 different names being used to refer to 2 elevator bays. Approval of new standardized names, front-line staff training, changes to appointment invites, and consistent signage would be critical to reducing patient confusion.
COVID-19 restrictions meant that patients with visitors would need to wait while clinics were contacted to approve their visits. Comfortable physically distanced waiting areas would free up screening booths and reduce patient and visitor stress.
Layout changes in the hospital and the introduction of screening booths needed complimentary visual cues, such as indicators of where to stand while queuing and signage with clear instructions.
To reduce queues, patients would need to be prepared for time-sensitive actions. Installing social distancing queuing markers would prepare patients to be attentive to open spaces and quickly fill the next available spot.
Design and Implementation
This project took place during a time of transition and uncertainty. We iterated toward solutions by prototyping and testing in short sprints as we course-corrected towards effective and practical solutions.
Eye level signage was developed to guide patients through doorways, and to identify key landmarks such as the elevator bays, blood labs, and pharmacy. This signage was designed to emphasize the current location and to provide secondary directions to other hospital locations.
We designed the signs to be highly legible, brightly coloured, and placed where they would be easy to see. The instructions on the eye-level signs and floor markers also needed to be clear and easy to follow.
Floor signage was created to guide patients quickly between elevators and to support physical distance, queuing, and patients who are “up-next” for service. We also helped with the design of screening booths and optimizing the layout of the space for safe and efficient flow.
Important to the success of these measures was working with management to rename the elevators, working with the communications department to roll out these names hospital wide, getting front-line staff and clinics trained on how to use these standard names, and assisting with getting staff trained on how to direct patients to signage.
Outcomes
The implemented designs drastically reduced staff’s concerns about having to guide patients one-by-one to landmarks within the hospital. The improvements to screening booth areas streamlined the screening process and staff reported improved physical distancing in queues around the hospital and a reduced need to remind patients to leave space for one another. Our team will continue to collaborate with Princess Margaret in order to monitor the response to our designs as patient volumes increase and pandemic measures change. In the long term, we will also support the transition to a permanent wayfinding solution to ensure that insights from our research and design process are incorporated into the hospital environment.
Before we designed necessary interventions, the volume and location of signage, lack of clarity, and inconsistent naming for elevators created barriers for efficient wayfinding.