Herman Miller Healthcare Researcher Supports Evidence-Based Design Accreditation
Healthcare design is a growing part of our business, and our research in this area has helped us develop a portfolio of problem-solving products and enabled us to partner with healthcare organizations interested in building and designing efficient spaces for staff and patients.
Much of our research includes evidence-based design, which is why I decided to pursue Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC) from The Center for Health Design. Evidence-based design is the process of basing decisions about the built environment on credible research to achieve the best possible outcomes. It’s still in its infancy and not without skeptics. Yet, it’s a rapidly growing field and it’s making important contributions to the design of healthcare environments.
The accreditation program provides participants with an understanding of how to incorporate findings such as the restorative effect of nature into healthcare building design decisions. For example, views of nature reduce a patient’s use of pain medication and reduce stress. We also know that private patient rooms reduce the spread of infection and improve communication between caregivers and patients and family.
Overall, I’m looking forward to putting this accreditation to work and becoming part of a community that focuses on the education and assessment of an evidence-based design process.
The field of Human Resources faces much the same challenges in improving employee satisfaction. It’s very difficult to find objective studies that offer data on employees’ subjective experience. You have to figure out what measurable factors to use as proxies for fuzzy concepts like “engagement”. However, it’s not impossible to do – it just takes innovative thinking. Employers are finally starting to realize that they need to devote resources to this kind of research. It will be hugely helpful for building evidence based disciplines in a variety of industries that provide goods and services for supporting a workforce.
Daisy McCarty
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