How the pandemic has changed the way we plan and design hospital facilities

Nearly three years after the onset of COVID-19, we can all confirm that the pandemic has changed the way we travel, work, approach our daily lives, deliver care, and plan healthcare environments.

Over the past month, I had the opportunity to attend the Healthcare Design Conference, a major international event dedicated to architecture in the healthcare sector. Nearly 100 conferences, panel discussions, and workshops brought together more than 4,000 healthcare professionals, architects, and administrators to exchange on emerging trends and lessons learned over recent years. In this context, the pandemic highlighted several challenges related to hospital layouts, care delivery, and the healing environments we strive to create.

For example, a patient in an intensive care unit (ICU), for whom rest is essential to recovery, can be disturbed nearly 50 times a day for vital sign checks, medication administration, and health assessments. Artificial lighting required to deliver care, the constant noise from equipment—such as ventilators, which can generate more decibels than a Harley-Davidson motorcycle—and the voices of healthcare professionals all contribute to this disruption.

During the pandemic, healthcare staff were required to don and remove personal protective equipment for each patient visit, a process taking approximately 15 to 20 minutes each time. This significantly reduced direct care time, not to mention the substantial amount of waste generated, all to adjust equipment such as ventilators and IV lines. A relatively simple solution emerged: relocating certain equipment into corridors while maintaining pressure integrity to prevent virus transmission. This approach reduces patient disturbance without compromising safety, allows professionals to devote more time to care, and significantly decreases waste.

However, corridors were not originally designed to accommodate this equipment or the associated noise. As a result, future healthcare facilities should incorporate soundproofed alcoves to house such equipment, without reducing the required corridor widths needed for patient transport, while still complying with regulations and specific functional needs.

We can recall the changes implemented in hospitals following SARS and other infectious outbreaks, which led to the elimination of multiple-occupancy rooms whenever possible, both in hospitals and long-term care facilities. In recent years, we have had the opportunity to apply these lessons by planning spaces—such as at Verdun Hospital—based on emerging trends and insights drawn from international projects. There is no doubt that new lessons will also be learned from the current pandemic and integrated into the functional programs of future major healthcare projects.