YDC Tour: Mock-Ups of Boston Children’s Hospital, Waltham

This month PAYETTE’s Young Designers Core (YDC) organized a trip to Boston Children’s Hospital to view mock-ups where the hospital is testing the effectiveness of future patient spaces for the Waltham Satellite Hospital. The future construction on Boston Children’s Hospital Waltham campus will expand the hospital’s ability to serve the public. The tour was led by PAYETTE’s own Milly Baker, Nicole Lecuivre and Justin Miller. The team showed us the full scale mock-up spaces designed by PAYETTE.

These spaces range from inpatient rooms and orthopedic exam spaces to operating rooms that need to function as both a serious care system as well as a learning opportunity for young professionals in the medical industry. To accommodate both the patient and students, we learned that the floor plan separates patients from the support functions through circulation divisions. However, these demanding spaces require much more than plan efficiencies to function properly; this is where the full scale mock-ups come into play. The tour highlighted the need and importance of full space mock-ups within the healthcare industry, particularly because interactions between caretakers and the spaces must be seamless in order to meet every need of the healthcare process. Full-scale mock-ups offer the opportunity for user feedback and conjoint testing of the space and the personnel.

We first visited an inpatient room that could be adapted to various intensities of need, depending on the patient. Immediately noticeable was the faceting of the corridor walls of the room which provide space, outside of the 8-foot required corridor, that could be staffed by two nurses with unobstructed views into the rooms. These “care provider zones” allow for groups of physicians and their residents to gather outside the patient rooms on their rounds.

Another innovative design feature is the pass-through casework of decentralized nursing materials where staff can place materials and medicine directly from the hallway to the room eliminating patient disturbances. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the mock-ups was the combination of more permanent construction with much more temporary means, namely cardboard. One of these pass-through casework units was constructed out of cardboard as well as outlet and other utility locations on walls which were determined through user feedback. All of these pediatric spaces have areas for family members to stay and several layouts were tested based on the layout of the bathrooms. One of the more challenging aspects of designing these spaces as described by Milly Baker is the necessary inclusion of seemingly minor yet vital objects, such as the sharps disposal container or separate trash bins, which ideally are gathered together in a zone.

In-Patient Room Mock-Up

The orthopedic exam room cluster separates patient circulation from the caretakers and groups the rooms around central pod spaces. This gives physicians and their students/assistants the ability to gather while keeping track of patient status on centralized screens. Although this layout is more spatially demanding, it is appropriate for teaching applications. Certain equipment was constructed of cardboard at full scale to test its maneuverability within and between these rooms.

Floor plan of orthopedic exam rooms

Finally, we visited a mock-up of an operating room, complete with overhead, booms and ground equipment. One of the challenges with the operating room design is the mounting of the overhead booms to underside of the steel decking as they can rotate on a radius of more than 6ft resulting in powerful torque forces. Having the overhead booms constructed at scale allows for doctors to perform mock surgery and make sure that the room meets their needs. These generous 620 SF rooms allow for orthopedic operations where the patient’s extremities would be outstretched and fixed. The group of operating rooms share a common sterile corridor, similar to the exam rooms, however in this application the space would allow for quick equipment and material exchange and retrieval in a sterile environment. The 21st century operating room comes equipped with large screens in ideal locations throughout the space, allowing physicians and nurses the ability to monitor the patient.

Operating Room Mock-Up

The YDC tour of the different mock-up spaces highlighted the importance of full scale mock-up spaces. This mock-up allowed the team to coordinate details to ensure that the design is efficient and serves the occupants upon completion.

Related Links:
Boston Children’s Hospital in the News
Boston Children’s Hospital: Building Geometry
Prototypes and Mock-ups
Introducing PAYETTE’s Fabrication Space