A New Respiratory Care Center: Model for Planning and Design

Abstract

Faced with a rapidly increasing patient load and cramped and inefficient working quarters, the staff of the Lutheran Hospital (Moline, Illinois) Respiratory Therapy Department undertook to plan and design a respiratory care center in a proposed addition to the hospital. Patient rooms were placed on the perimeter of a 20,000-square-foot area, while the core of the Center was designed to include the Center nurses' station, examination and treatment facilities, and a general services area. The Center also houses its own cleaning and sterilization area, a Biometrics Center, and an Education Center. An enclosed courtyard joins the Center to the rest of the hospital building. Great care was taken to minimize possibilities of cross-infection by the location and arrangement of work flow in the cleaning and sterilization area, by the installation of a highly efficient air handling system, by careful control of patient, visitor, and equipment traffic, and by other design features. The centralization of respiratory care patients in the unit helps the staff provide care more efficiently and is a useful labor- and cost-saving technique, as has been demonstrated since the Center opened in November 1976.