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Nurture by Steelcase Study Finds Room Design Can Enhance Patient Care

Principle investigators on the study were Victor Montori, M.D. of the Mayo Clinic and Joyce Bromberg, director of Workspace Futures Research for Steelcase.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 11/2/2009 12:00:00 AM

Nurture by Steelcase Mayo Clinic
Nurture's experimental room

It's official: the design of a consultation room can improve the quality of an outpatient visit. It comes from an impeccable source, the esteemed Mayo Clinic, the first and largest not-for-profit group practice in the world, which has treated patients from Helen Keller and Lou Gehrig to Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.

Nurture, the healthcare division of furniture manufacturer Steelcase, teamed up with the Rochester, Minnesota-based medical center and funded the collaborative research study which was developed and conducted to understand the extent to which a consultation room designed to support present-day clinical encounters could affect the consultation between patients and clinicians.

The study, conducted by principle investigators Victor Montori, M.D. of the Mayo Clinic and Joyce Bromberg, director of Workspace Futures Research for Steelcase, included a Space and Interaction Trial (SIT), which consisted of 63 pairs of patients and doctors. The pairs were randomly assigned to either a conventional room or to an experimental one. The experimental room was designed so that the patient and the clinician were side by side facing a computer screen while seated at a semicircular desk.

Nurture by Steelcase Mayo Clinic
The conventional room

The researchers found that patients and clinician satisfaction with the conventional rooms was very high but that clinicians could share more information with patients in the experimental rooms where both could view the computer screen. The also noted that patients felt they more and better access to information, including their own records, test results, images, and online patient education material in the experimental rooms.

"This study supports the notion that the space in which people meet can influence how they work together, says Mayo's Dr. Montori.

Bromberg adds, "Helping to build a body of evidence that leads to better health care outcomes and experiences is foundational to our mission."

The findings of the randomized trial, the result of post-visit follow-up surveys with the participants, will appear in the Fall issue of Health Environments Research and Design Journal. Dr. Montori can also be viewed discussing the study on YouTube.