EDRA50 Special Edition 1: Bridging healthcare and design with education
GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN HEALTH SYSTEMS AND FACILITIES DESIGN
Listen in on my conversation with Sara Bayramzadeh, from Kent State University, talking about Kent State’s new online Graduate Certificate in Health Systems and Facilities Design. We sat down together at the recent EDRA50 conference in Brooklyn, NY.
About your host
Nichole Kain, OTR/L, MA, CAPS
About your host: Nichole Kain is a researcher and consultant focused on aging-friendly community planning, residential universal design, and person-centered analysis of the built environment. Her work is based in solid research and guided by a deep appreciation for the power of place and importance of personal choice.
Nichole is the founder of Home and Place Project. With an educational background in occupational therapy, environmental gerontology, community planning, and training as a certified aging in place specialist, she helps decision makers create homes and places that promote intergenerational wellness.
To connect, collaborate, or just learn more about Nichole and her work, please visit: www.homeandplaceproject.com
Want to be social? You can also find Nichole on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Transcript
Suggested citation:
Kain, N. (Host) & Bayramzadeh, S. (Guest). (2019, June 9). EDRA50 Special Edition 1: Bridging Healthcare and Design with Education [audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.homeandplaceproject.com/podcast/2019/6/9/edra50-special-edition-1-bridging-healthcare-and-design-with-education
Huge thank you to Dr Michael Murtha, a long-time EDRAite, who generously donated his time to provide this written transcript.
NICHOLE: Welcome to a special edition of Home and Place Podcast, recorded May 2019 in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the anniversary celebration for EDRA 50, that’s the Environmental Design Research Association’s 50th anniversary conference. I’m your host, Nichole Kain. For these special edition EDRA 50 episodes we’re shortening the usual podcast format of 30 minutes and instead sharing shortened interviews with lecturers or compiled micro-interviews with poster presenters.
The response to this podcast was heart-warming, I’m sorry I was not able to record all the researchers interested in sharing their work during the conference. However, the good news is that is exactly why I created Home and Place Podcasts to share the amazing work of built environment professionals with a passion for place.
So, if you’re an EDRAite, which is a member of EDRA, send me an email, we can schedule a virtual recording. Visit my website and listen to all the podcast episodes and see pictures from EDRA 50, and find my contact information.
Visit www.HomeAndPlacePodcast.com
This episode was recorded on location in Brooklyn, New York at the EDRA 50 Conference, so please pardon the background noise. Now on with the show!
NICHOLE: Hello and welcome, we are here in Brooklyn, New York at the EDRA conference, this is the Environmental Design Research Association, and I am here with Sara and we are going to be talking about Kent State University, that’s in Kent, Ohio.
We are going to be talking about health systems and facilities design online graduate certificate. I’m really excited about this program and very excited for Sara to tell you more about it.
So, Sara, welcome, thank you so much for being here.
SARA: Thank you for having me. Just a little bit of introduction about myself, my name is Sara Bayramzadeh, I’m the coordinator of Healthcare Design Program at Kent State University.
NICHOLE: So, can you tell us a little about yourself, maybe your educational background and how you got interested in health care design.
SARA: Sure, I have a bachelor’s degree architectural engineering and I have a master of architecture and a Ph.D. in design, construction, and planning. My Ph.D. has a concentration in interior design and when I started the program that’s when I got interested in health care, and the reason was that I felt that as a designer that I would like to be able to contribute a lot, and I think the area of health care design is one of those areas that has a lot to offer to a lot of user types, basically, because in the health care environment we are dealing with patients, family members, and staff members and that adds to the complexity of the work we can do there.
NICHOLE: Absolutely and I am really excited about this certificate also because I really haven’t seen anything quite like this, not as in depth as this goes. So, through Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio, it’s the health systems and facilities design online graduate certificate.
Hey, Sara, can you tell me a little bit about who this program is for, who’s your audience.
SARA: Sure, this program is prepared for anyone who is interested in understanding how design can play a role in health care outcomes, and that means that includes a range of experiences, and it can be from any background, basically, design or non-design, if they’re architects, interior designers, or health care professionals, if they’re educators, construction management professionals, human factors experts, this certificate applies to all of them.
NICHOLE: Yeah, I think that one thing that I’ve gotten me really thinking, my background is occupational therapy and gerontology, I don’t have any design background. So, coming from that world, versus coming from the health care world, maybe someone who has worked in health care facilities, as a nurse or some other staff member or facilities. What will they learn within this program? if they have no design background.
SARA: That’s a great question. So, we have some learning outcomes for this program, and the main one is that there is a challenge in communication between designers and health care professionals. Usually, the designers do not necessarily understand everything that health care professionals are talking about and vice versa, and sometimes health care professionals do not know what designers are talking about, they are not able to read floor plans. So, there are difficulties like that which causes the communication not to be as productive as it should be, if it’s a design project, or if it’s a new design project or if it’s a renovation.
Although the communication should be perfect productive, there is a chance that they cannot communicate their needs and then the client will be hurt and this might not happen. So this certificate would help everybody to understand each other in terms of the terminology and the concepts that exist in design and health care professions.
The other learning outcome that we are considering is to understand and translate the research literature to design practice. So, health care design area is one of those design areas that research is very established I would say that it helps designers to be able to use evidence and research-based data to drive the design and design processes and it also helps designers to be able to make decisions that are backed up by evidence. So, this certificate will help everyone to have a knowledge of what research is, how to apply it in the design process and get to know the evidence-based design process.
We also want our graduates to learn about real world design and real world design influencing health care outcomes, and that includes outcomes such as safety or efficiency, or real world experience for patients, staff and family members.
This would help clients to be able to actually evaluate the design proposals that they are getting from design professionals and be able to actually voice their concerns and evaluate the design.
NICHOLE: I’m really curious, Sara, how long does the program take, you know, once the student starts, how long until they are able to graduate from the program? And then, also, could you go into a little more detail on each class that is offered.
SARA: Sure, the program has 12 credit hours and these are taken in the fall semester and the spring semester, so it will take you one year to finish. You may start in the Fall semester, you may start in the Spring semester.
So 12 credit hours which should be addressed in these two semesters, 6 credits hours in each. We have 6 courses that we offer, 5 of them are core courses and one is elective. Its up to the students, if they want to take more electives, but they can just take one and that would be 12 credit hours for the whole certificate.
Each course is 2 credit hours and they are offered in 7 week spaces. So, each course is 7 weeks long, you can finish on one topic and then move on to the next. This format is intended to give more flexibility to the working professionals that are one of our main intended audiences. So, it is online, it is flexible, and it is only 12 credit hours.
SARA: So, the type of courses that we offer, the five core courses we have, the first course is “Evidence-Based Design for Healthcare” and that is the [grand cruise?] the definition of evidence-based design and how research can be applied in the design process.
NICHOLE: That sounds like a foundational course. Here’s where we start let’s get on the base level, we are focusing on evidence-based design and so it kind of sounds like a foundational language course, almost to me, let’s build a similar language together with an [interim credit card?].
SARA: Yes, lots of learning outcomes like I mentioned, how to understand and translate research into the design practice. So, this course will help students to understand what research is and how to apply the results in the design process, basically.
The next course is “Healthcare Facilities” that includes topics such as programming, planning, master planning and codes and regulations that we need to follow in the health care setting.
The next course is “Healthcare Environmental Settings and Materials”. That course has two sections, one is focused on lighting design and the other part is focused on interior spatial healthcare environments, that includes furniture, finishes, materials, colors.
The next course is “Environmental Care and Patient Populations”, that includes topics on different types of patients and how their needs are different, for example if we have psychiatric patients versus pediatric patients how their needs are different. Psychiatric patients need different safety measures compared to other populations. So, it is important for students to understand that different patients need different things, so when they’re designing the [new] facilities for these populations, what are the design considerations we need to pay attention to.
Now, the next course is “Patient Safety and Systems Thinking” this is an interdisciplinary course that focuses on patient safety from an industrial engineering standpoint and also human factors. There is a model in systems engineering called SEIPS and that stands for Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety
They define 5 main components that lead to patient safety, they include Organization, Technology, People, Tasks, and the Physical Environment. This is one of the very unique models that in non-design related fields actually acknowledges the physical environment and how it has a role in achieving patient safety. So this course will help designers to understand that from a human factors perspective there are things that are being considered in helping human factors and industrial engineers to understand how details of architecture and design can play a role in patient safety.
NICHOLE: Very neat, that sounds like a really amazing class and then we have an elective option.
SARA: Yes, we have an elective option, we have a list of approved electives and courses from the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, College of Public Health, and College of Nursing, and students can select a course from any of these colleges, based on their interest and the expertise that they want to develop.
NICHOLE: Interesting, so if a construction management student comes in or a construction management professional comes into the course and wants to take a nursing class, what would that be like for them, because I’m just thinking if the health care people are coming into it they are going to get some design, but if the designers and construction managers come into it, they are going to get some health care too, which is fantastic, I love that.
SARA: Yes, a construction management professional depending on their own interest and the type of project that they work on in their specific company. Because companies can be different and the projects that they have might be different. But depending on their institutions and their interests they may benefit from different things. So, one thing in nursing that I can think of is administration, and I think that would help them, knowing who to communicate with and the rules that they have as part of the construction and design team that they will be communicating with and construction management would be part of that, planning the whole project in terms of management of that, knowing how nurses work or from an administrative point of view, how the healthcare services will need to be [delegated] and the timeline.
NICHOLE: Yeah, and I can see, they might not have a full understanding of how the nurses work on their shift, but at least they are going to have some language now to be able to go and cross those bridges. Health people are coming and they are learning the built environment language and we have the built environment people coming in and learning the healthcare language.
What makes me so excited about this program is that this is a bridge program, it bridges these worlds with language and with evidence-based research. And I think this is so needed and essential that I’m really excited you are doing this.
SARA: Yes, thank you, you’re actually explaining that very well.
NICHOLE: Thank you so much for taking your time this evening for the podcast today, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening to this special edition of Home and Place Podcasts, recorded May 2019 in Brooklyn, New York as part of the anniversary celebration of EDRA 50, the Environmental Design Research Association, 50th anniversary conference.
I’m your host, Nichole Kain, founder of Home and Place Project, I’m an independent researcher and consultant focused on residential universal design and person-centered analysis of the built environment. My educational background is in occupational therapy, environmental gerontology and I’m currently back in school studying community planning with an interest in creating aging friendly communities.
To connect, collaborate or just to learn more about me and my work, visit my website, HomeAndPlaceProject.com
As we wrap up I wanted to share a brief overview of EDRA. From their literature, the mission of EDRA is to provide a collaborative multidisciplinary community to transform research, teaching, and practice to create and advocate for environments that are responsive to diverse human needs. EDRA is committed to equity, inclusion and respect for all persons.
On a personal note, I adore EDRA, and feel as if I truly found my with people there.
If you are interested in learning more about this organization, visit their website edra.org, EDRA.org
Happy 50th Anniversary EDRA, where will the next 50 years take us?
Finally, a special thanks to Delia of Northfield, Minnesota for composing and performing this original music.
Take us home Delia.
END