Healthcare Staff Respite

Responding to crisis levels of healthcare staff burnout, Philips wanted to repurpose technology to improve hospital working conditions. My team developed three respite space concepts to support staff well-being.

Fast Company 2023 Innovation by Design Awards Honorable Mention

Challenge

Healthcare staff burnout is at crisis levels, and respite spaces are emerging as one potential way to support staff well-being.

Philips wanted to explore the needs being met by these spaces, and whether their existing Ambient spatial and lighting technology might be repurposed to provide needed respite for staff.

Could Ambient technology be used to alleviate healthcare staff burnout?

Approach

My team set out to understand the context of healthcare staff at risk of burnout, and what needs might be met through spatial and lighting technology. We brought together a diverse group of designers, doctors, and nurses in the process.

Online research

We reviewed 80+ white papers and articles to understand the burnout crisis, including drivers of burnout vs. engagement and learnings from experiments like makeshift respite spaces.

Staff interviews and observations

We talked with 12 nurses and doctors across 8 different health systems to understand their lived experience, unmet needs, and desired support.

Analogous research

We looked to workplace and environmental design for key principles we might be able to apply to healthcare staff experiences.

Journey mapping

We mapped the typical days of nurses and doctors to visualize their (very different!) contexts and pain points, as well as their ideas about what a respite space should do for them. We validated with our interviewees, and this allowed us to identify needs and opportunities.

Opportunity

We saw a range of opportunities for Ambient technology to support both nurses and doctors, including:

Coping with difficult patient situations
Coming together as a team
Slowing the pace of distress caused by rarely taken breaks and limited access to natural light

How might we leverage Ambient space and lighting to help healthcare staff recharge on the job to reduce risk of burnout?

Provocations for co-design

We generated seven initial spatial/experiential concepts, which leveraged insights from our user research and workplace/ environmental best practices to help staff recharge on the job.

Using these concepts as provocations, we conducted a series of co-design sessions with healthcare staff and spatial, product, and experience designers. We prioritized, refined, and further developed concepts in these sessions.