New-Age Furniture

Experts opine on the shift from comfortable to connected furniture

Hospital furniture, when rightly designed, aids mobilisaton of patients, enhances mobility of transport, and reduces the workload of care givers. And when poorly designed, it can cause discomfort and even risk to patients like entrapment and bed sores, which result in prolonged hospitalisation. And non-ergonomic furniture could result in occupational injuries including back injuries and related problems for caregivers.

Below is expert opinion on the evolving trends in hospital furniture:

Choosing the right furniture is important to create an environment that invite, comfort and heal. Uncertainty is a shared experience for patients and healthcare facilities can be unsettling places for them. From the moment they arrive, throughout their stays and on follow-up visits, patients are making assumptions about the care they would receive and are seeking reassurances.

Healthcare environments play a critical role in how patients interpret the quality of their treatment and view their overall experiences. By creating a healing, nurturing environment, a healthcare facility can enhance its patient-centric care. It can ensure each patient’s comfort, privacy, dignity and respect and help build lasting patient relationships.

Appropriate furniture selection helps reduce patient anxieties, integrate patient-centered care into every corner of a facility’s environment and create an uplifting, healing spaces for patients. It increases efficiency of the staff performance and restorative for workers under stress.

If furniture is uncomfortable, then it’s likely the one thing that patients will remember about their entire healthcare experience. It causes discomfort and longer recovery period, leads to loss of trust about the quality of service offers by the hospital and has an impact on overall experience.