Hospital as a City: Reorganization of Future Healthcare Environments in the Context of Twenty-First Century Civilization Challenges

Abstract

The twenty-first century is a time of tremendous technological breakthrough. Simultaneously with finding ourselves in the innovative world, we have to face the reality of major shifts and social problems on the global scale. Comparing to the last century, the most essential problems are demographic changes and the complexity of population. Staggering density increase in urban centers can be observed, due to a high migration rate. Furthermore, people in the world are rapidly becoming the ageing societies. According to the enormous innovations in medicine industry, which happened in terms of postwar development, humans were given additional thirty years of life. People are living longer and qualitatively better. Notwithstanding this fact, hospital units are overcrowded with people - similar to cities being overpopulated. The study explores an approach for improving future healthcare. With such strong structure resemblance between hospitals and cities, the main purpose was to identify and reveal the most critical aspects of hospital spatial organization. Research investigates both patients and medical staff. Medical personnel is particularly important, because of being literally a main employer and economic engine in societies, what was proven in the research result. Mixed methods research has been undertaken in order to compare both quantitative and qualitative data. The collected information through surveys was juxtaposed with peculiar design examples within healthcare facilities. Spatial organization and its efficiency plays a meaningful role in advancing care quality and overall hospital performance, what impacts significantly on public city infrastructure, sustainability and the local environment.



Author Information
Paulina Szuba and Ewa Pruszewicz-Sipińska

Paper Information
Conference: HCNY2018
Stream: Geography and Landscape/Urban Planning, Architecture and Design

This paper is part of the HCNY2018 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon