Operating Theatre Block Planning and Design
Enero Arquitectura
EuHPN welcomed three expert panelists to a webinar on ‘Operating Theatre Block Planning and Design’ on Friday 11th November, to discuss three questions:
· Why do differences in OT block design arise, even in contemporaneously planned and constructed facilities?
· What evidence is used by planners and designers?
· Whose voices are heard during the planning and design phases, for new build or refurbishment?
These questions arose from an EuHPN member’s observation that, despite the stringent scientific and technological requirements of the operating theatre environment, and despite the existence of extensive clinical and technical professional networks, OT blocks are often organised and designed very differently, even when comparing facilities built contemporaneously in the same region. These differences can be profound: the dimensions of the work space, provison (or not) of clean and dirty corridors, the siting (or even existence) of anaesthetic and post-operative recovery rooms, and much else besides. As one of the webinar audience members put it, ‘The work of orthopedic surgeons is essentially the same in Spain, Sweden or the UK, so why don’t they have the same environments? Why is guidance on this different in similar health systems?’
The webinar was designed to be exploratory and thought-provoking – there was no expectation of arriving at definitive answers within just 1.5 hours of discusssion – and we had some fascinating conntributions from Gareth Banks (AHR, UK), Rozalind Murphy (O’Connell Mahon, Ireland) and Francisco Ortega (ENERO Architects, Spain).
You can find the video of this webinar here, under ‘Featured Videos’ and access it by registering with your name and email address.
Thanks to Isabel Sanchez for suggesting this webinar theme and organising the event. The panel members were:
Francisco Ortega Montoliu. Francisco is an architect and director general of Enero Architects, based in Spain: https://www.eneroarquitectura.com/en/the-studio/. Enero have a long history of delivering major healthcare infrastructure projects through use of a highly multidisciplinary team of professsionals.
Presentation available here
Rozalind Murphy. Rozalind is Senior Architect Associate Director at O’Connell Mahon, with long experience of healthcare architecture and healthcare estates and service planning, and has recently been involved in design and briefing for the New Children’s Hospital and the National Maternity Hospital in Ireland. https://www.oconnellmahon.ie/.
Presentation available here
Gareth Banks. Gareth is a Regional Director and Healthcare Lead for AHR, an architecture and building consultancy based in the UK. Gareth has worked nationally and internationally, specialising in healthcare and laboratory design etc. He has expertise in all stages of the process including funding, briefing, design and construction. https://www.ahr.co.uk/.
Presentation available here