We’re heading straight for a significant healthcare worker shortage—and fast. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, by 2033, the U.S. could experience a shortage of anywhere from 54,000 to 140,000 physicians.
By just 2025, the consulting firm Mercer estimates that we’ll see significant shortages in nursing assistants (95,000), home health aides (446,000), nurse practitioners (29,000) and medical and lab technologists and technicians (nearly 100,000).
This reality means colleges and universities are heavily investing in their health sciences and medical education programs to combat this shortage—with many creating new buildings or renovating their existing facilities. With building projects often taking multiple years to be designed, built and operationalized, it’s critical to fully understand the constantly evolving future of health sciences and medical education, and to design for that future today.
Here are a few ways we’re thinking about that future—and how we believe innovation and collaboration within these spaces will advance.
1. Buildings are only as collaborative as their users.
We know how to design spaces that encourage both planned and serendipitous collaboration. Co-locating different departments in the same areas and designing spaces flexible enough to be used by different departments and specializations are a few strategies we use.
But people won’t co-mingle and collaborate only because we’ve provided the spaces to do so. If the building users don’t see the value or available opportunities, collaboration won’t happen.
It might sound radical, but the best way to achieve better collaboration is by eliminating traditional operational silos and the resulting departments. For example, our firm is currently designing the first “department-less” hospital for the Philadelphia Neuroscience Institute. It was initiated not by the hospital C-suite, but by the team of neurosurgeons who will use the space each day. Without separate departments and offices, various clinicians, physicians, researchers and more will naturally be sharing spaces and continually collaborating on patient care.
The Philadelphia Neuroscience Institute establishes a new typology for healthcare design that will connect clinicians, patients and industry partners for bold new care delivery and research.
If this is the patient care building of the future, are education programs preparing students with the skills they need to thrive in this new reality?
2. Virtual Learning serves a great function—but can only go so far.
Training future medical practitioners and care staff virtually will not teach them how to empathize with people, which is a core tenant of their field. It’s important to connect with patients on a personal level—to see their body language, feel their emotions, understand their needs and provide compassionate in-person support and care.
Virtual learning is best for delivering educational content and providing self-paced lessons. Technology can close gaps: Instead of students having to take remedial courses and being told they’re not good enough, they can work individually to catch up with their peers. It also allows students to rewatch lectures and presentations to ensure they can review core anatomy, biology or chemistry concepts multiple times.
Using video, lessons can be taught and learned outside the classroom, which allows students to be physically present in school for project work and simulation practice. We designed the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine to accommodate this approach, which allowed us to free up more space in the building for team-based, hands-on learning.
The simulation areas in the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine allow students to fully engage in practicing the foundational skills required to care for patients in a variety of real-world settings.
3. The perfect space is an empty space.
It might sound counterintuitive coming from architects, but an empty space—with plenty of nearby storage—can be configured for a variety of disciplines, teaching styles, training and technology needs.
Envisioning uses for an empty space requires a lot of thought and foresight into how the room could and will be used in the future, and how technological advances might affect that. The Surgical and Innovation Training Lab we designed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) took this idea to the next level. The space can be transformed into an operating suite for extreme environments, such as on a space shuttle or in the middle of the desert with no resources around. To facilitate this kind of radical flexibility and adaptability, the ceiling plane was designed similarly to a theatre stage so that everything in the ceiling can be moved and re-arranged, including lights, equipment, technology and more.
UIC’s Surgical and Training Lab can easily be reconfigured to test out and simulate procedures for any type of environment.
“Flexibility” is the concept of the future when it comes to higher education spaces—and for good reason. The more flexible a room is, the more ways it can be used, which allows colleges and universities to get more for their limited budgets. An open room that allows for active learning, group work and technology use—like immersive virtual reality—can serve many different types of disciplines, courses and training needs.
4. Let’s think outside the hospital room.
As designers, we spend a lot of time conceptualizing the exam or inpatient room and other clinical spaces for both training and patient care, but healthcare—and even surgery—also happens outside the hospital walls in unregulated environments. It’s interesting to talk with paramedic and medivac teams about how they provide care and then incorporate mobile healthcare into training spaces.
While serious conditions and procedures still need to be managed within clinical environments, many procedures that were once inpatient reliant are now capable of being done in an ambulatory outpatient setting—and many patients, symptoms and conditions can be evaluated, monitored and treated virtually without having to step foot into a healthcare building. Patients can even be monitored remotely through wearable diagnostic devices that can anticipate problems or detect symptoms before a crisis occurs.
Teledigital pods for one-on-one virtual sessions give clinicians adequate space to perform virtual visits.
The doctor of the future needs to be trained to work “outside” the traditional hospital parameters and be able to diagnose, manage and treat conditions both in person and virtually.
5. Stress-reducing design elements can only go so far.
We know a lot about designing to improve mental health and wellness: providing access to daylight and outdoor spaces, utilizing soothing colors and incorporating biophilic design strategies like green walls are a few prime examples. But if someone is going through a very difficult personal experience outside of a healthcare building, these design elements can’t alone take that stress away.
Something we’re continually advocating for within medical education and health science buildings—and across higher education campuses—is dedicated space for mental health wellness. This could include space for meditation or respite or clinics for counseling services.
The rooftop at Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine is filled with amenity spaces for students to rest, relax and recharge, including areas for meditation, socializing, exercise and outdoor learning.
The pressures and stress that come with medical school can have a major impact on students’ mental health and wellness. The spaces we design must function as preventative tools to help diminish the potential for burnout and exhaustion.
6. Academic medical centers are the classroom of the future, again!
We’re designing health sciences and medical education buildings that offer plenty of space for hands-on training that also improves the health of the surrounding community. Malcolm X College in Chicago and the new Health Sciences Hub at D’Youville College both house clinics to provide healthcare services to the community.
But what if we bypassed the classroom and went straight to the care facility? What if all first-year students entered the hospital on day one?
Lectures and learning could take place off-site; simulation centers could be expanded and classrooms could be inserted into hospital buildings to allow for discussion and debriefs. Hospitals are the ultimate classrooms—let’s start there.
A teaching institution affiliated with the Université de Montréal, the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal is the largest new healthcare development in North America. It was designed to seamlessly merge education, research and healthcare.
With the large investments higher education institutions are making in the medical education and health sciences fields, now is the time to push boundaries and think bigger. Let’s get creative about the teaching, learning and training environments we create—and prepare students to be the best providers possible.
Related Stories
| Jan 9, 2014
How security in schools applies to other building types
Many of the principles and concepts described in our Special Report on K-12 security also apply to other building types and markets.
| Jan 9, 2014
16 recommendations on security technology to take to your K-12 clients
From facial recognition cameras to IP-based door hardware, here are key technology-related considerations you should discuss with your school district clients.
| Jan 9, 2014
Harley Ellis Devereaux, BFHL Architects announce merger
Effective January 1, 2014, Ralph Lotito and Brett Paloutzian have merged BFHL, comprising 15 healthcare architects, with Harley Ellis Devereaux. A national architecture and engineering firm in practice since 1908, Harley Ellis Devereaux has offices in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, CA.
| Jan 9, 2014
Special report: Can design prevent another Sandy Hook?
Our experts say no, but it could save lives. In this report, they offer recommendations on security design you can bring to your K-12 clients to prevent, or at least mitigate, a Sandy Hook on their turf.
| Jan 8, 2014
Dan Noble succeeds H. Ralph Hawkins as president/CEO of HKS
H. Ralph Hawkins, FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP,current chairman, president and CEO, named Dan Noble FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP, his successor as president and CEO, effective January 1, 2014. Jeff Stouffer, AIA, will succeed Craig Beale, FAIA, FACHA, FACHE, as director of the firm's healthcare practice.
| Jan 8, 2014
Architect sentenced to a year in jail for firefighter's death
Architect Gerhard Becker was sentenced to a year in LA county jail after pleading no contest to the manslaughter of a firefighter who died while trying to contain a fire in a home the architect had designed for himself.
| Jan 7, 2014
Concrete solutions: 9 innovations for a construction essential
BD+C editors offer a roundup of new products and case studies that represent the latest breakthroughs in concrete technology.
Smart Buildings | Jan 7, 2014
9 mega redevelopments poised to transform the urban landscape
Slowed by the recession—and often by protracted negotiations—some big redevelopment plans are now moving ahead. Here’s a sampling of nine major mixed-use projects throughout the country.
| Jan 6, 2014
What is value engineering?
If you had to define value engineering in a single word, you might boil it down to "efficiency." That would be one word, but it wouldn’t be accurate.
| Jan 6, 2014
Green Building Initiative names Jerry Yudelson as new President
The Green Building Initiative announced today that it has named Jerry Yudelson as its president to accelerate growth of the non-profit and further leverage its green building assessment tools, including the highly recognized Green Globes rating system.