Create Your Own Space!

For better patient outcomes, inter alia, well designated hospital spaces are crucial for healthcare professionals in a public health facility, as it can impact their ability to deliver quality patient care and ensure more supportive work environment, ultimately benefitting patient care and thus is pivotal.

While needs of the patients and that of the healthcare providers overlap in many cases but there are instances when they swerve. During a visit to one of the private/corporate hospitals in Srinagar, two things were visible – one, uniform of different shades and colours donned by different healthcare professionals; giving a firsthand appraisal of Who is Who?; and second the space earmarked for them.

The uniform being the symbol of discipline helps patients and their attendants identify the healthcare professionals in terms of their professional hierarchy, as many a time attendants of patients in public health facilities call every tom, dick and harry as Doctor Sahab! sans proper uniform code.

Now the Space:

A full one-storey space area on a newly established public health facilities in Srinagar on its top floor has surprisingly been earmarked for the office area of healthcare professionals, which if balanced well could have been utilized for patients, as at times two to three patients struggle to get adjusted in one bed.

When designing a public healthcare facility, it is imperative to strike a balance to ensure sufficient space is utilized for the patient care. For this purpose a space audit is need of the day, something which often goes unnoticed. While the respective administrative department should treat this as priority and ensure allocation of space as per the established standards and recommendations, the healthcare providers should not see it through the prism of prestige.

The true patient-care should not lie in soliciting a cozy and impressive space, rather creating space within the hearts of the patients visiting these healthcare facilities for solace; a real gesture of care and compassion and restoring humanity in healthcare.

As reflected, “The quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.”

The author is Editor at a weekly Kashmiri,hails from Khrew