EBD for Estates

The last few days have been concentrated researching design and healthcare. While focusing on Evidence based Design (EBD), it strikes me how important EBD is, but also recognise that it does not affect many NHS Trusts on a day to day basis.

EBD truely hit its stride post 2003 in an article in Healthcare Design Magazine that described a four-level evidencebased process in which “An evidence-based designer, together with an informed client, makes decisions based on the best information available from research and project evaluations. Critical thinking is required to develop an appropriate solution to the design problem”(1).

However, since over 79% of the NHS was built before EBD was even a recognised discipline (fig. 1), the benefits of EBD cannot readily be seen.

Figure 1 - Impact of EBD in the NHS (2)

It is hoped that with the New Hospitals Programme really getting underway in the last six months, the opportunity to fully embed EBD with designers, architects, nurses, clinicians, infection control specialists and, most importantly, estates professionals.

The reason i say 'most importantly' is that while clinical staff function in these areas, most clinical staff are already indoctrinated in Evidence-based practice. However, for those staff that need to maintain, repair and refurbish the environments, the principles are new, but very important if EBD is to be common practice within the NHS built environment.

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1) Viets, Elizabeth. “Lessons from Evidence-Based Medicine: What Healthcare Designers Can Learn from the Medical Field.” HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal 2, no. 2 (January 1, 2009): 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/193758670900200207.

2) https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/estates-returns-information-collection