Nursing Stations by Steelcase Healthcare Report

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you how vital the role of the nurse is in any healthcare organization’s ability to provide quality care. Yet, despite this, most hospitals do not provide their nursing staff with effectively designed nursing stations that meet the functional, ergonomic and psychosocial needs of staff, patient and guests.

So what should you consider when designing a highly effective nursing environment?

"The most critical factor in designing a high performing space is understanding who works there, what they do and the tools they need to help them work," explains Robyn Baxter, Applied Research Consultant, Steelcase. Robyn spent several weeks observing people working in nursing environments at a fast-paced healthcare facility in a major North American city to understand how they worked and to recommend appropriate settings and tools that would better support them. Here’s what she learned:

"A typical nursing station has four main groups of users and they all need access to information and each other," says Robyn. "What we observed, is that in traditional nursing stations all these users were constantly running into each other because the space did not properly support their different needs. The space was congested, workflow was impeded, and it was not nearly as efficient as it could have been. These types of nursing stations can’t meet the varied demands and pressures put on them. As a result we believe nursing stations should be designed with these four groups in mind."

Robyn and her team break down the user groups as follows:

Primary Users

Unit clerks that constantly multi-task at their desk; they link nurses, patients, doctors, and others guests. Primary tools: PC, telephones, forms and other reference documents; need to maintain visual contact with status boards, chart carts, patients, other nurses and doctors.

These users require ample worksurface and vertical space to enable them to reference multiple documents. Their workspace should be located outside the main traffic pattern within the nursing station.

Secondary Users

Nurses whose work is divided between patient rooms, resource areas and the nursing station. Tools include charts, phones, and status boards. Primary tools: PC, reference materials.

Space should accommodate constant traffic flow into and through the space and provide multiple worksurfaces (sitting and standing height) to accommodate their various tasks. As well, the space should be designed to allow several people to effectively work together within the same space.

Tertiary Users

Other disciplines that spend focussed time in each unit but have a primary workplace somewhere else; require access to PC and access to charts when they’re in the unit and moderate interaction with nurses and unit clerks.

These users require a moderate amount of worksurface to accommodate PCs and reference material and they should be located outside the main traffic areas within the nursing environment.

Patient and Family

A major initiative in most healthcare facilities today is to make nursing stations more accessible and user-friendly while at the same time balancing privacy issues and the healthcare worker’s ability to get their work done.

As a result of these learnings, Robyn identified the following design criteria for nursing environments:

create zones within the nursing station environment that address the needs of the specific users of the space
build flexibility into the space so users can control their environment and quickly adapt it to suit their immediate needs, based on the work they are doing at the time
address ergonomic issues: seating support, technology support, lighting
design the space to allow you to quickly rearrange components to address changes in technology and work process; flexibility means that changes can be made with minimal disruption to patients and staff at a minimal expense

The impact of highly effective nursing environments can go beyond enhancing patient care and improving productivity of nursing staff. It can also become a creative and effective way to address one of the most immediate issues of healthcare today – attracting and retaining nursing staff.