Design for restful sleep in the hospital
The design for restful sleep in the hospital project is a collaboration between the Auckland District Health Board and Massey University. The project aims to develop design interventions to improve in-patient sleep quality in order to facilitate healing and recovery. Within the hospital environment, the benefits of restful sleep are well understood but often difficult to achieve. This socially complex environment presents many interdependencies between service delivery, technology, environment and human interaction that produce disruptions to patient sleep experience. Our approach activates a multidisciplinary team of academics, health professionals and stakeholders through a co-design approach to research. The team assembles Massey University researchers from design, health sciences, construction and the built environment with ADHB healthcare professionals, strategists and stakeholders. Central to this process is the integration of Mātauranga Māori and Pacific people knowledge to identify problems and inform design solutions. The project outline contains a baseline study which will provide benchmarks for patient sleep experience and the affected environment providing feedback in the development of design. A co-design workshop will directly engage the knowledge, observations and experiences of contributors, building an understanding of the problems and actively providing potential solutions. Further design development will prototype, test and validate a range of design solutions across product, technology, spatial, materials, innovation and service, that collectively affect the quality of the sleep experience in hospitals. Our long term goal is to establish a nexus for research, clinical expertise and creative design solutions for the future of healthcare systems in New Zealand and beyond.
Co-PIs: Associate Professors Rodney Adank (School of Design, College of Creative Arts), Wyatt Page (School of Health Sciences, College of Health), Mirjam Münch (SWRC, College of Health)
Funder: Massey University Strategic Investment Fund