The rise of patient-centred care means that in addition to those open spaces and familiar coffee shops, there’s little sign of the technical aspects of medical care. As a physician, I recall learning how to practice “patient-centred medicine” in medical school. The emphasis was on producing empathetic doctors. We learned acronyms for questions that enhance a patient’s sense of autonomy. But I sense that for architects and planners, a deeper misunderstanding may be afoot.
Let’s be clear. Healthcare that does not look like healthcare is not healthcare — it is a sort of theatre created to distract an audience of anxious patients. It doesn’t serve their interests. It’s a funhouse mirror vision of patient-centred care, where it’s more important to pretend you’re not sick than to be properly treated.
For me, finding this paper was like finding the cause of a patient’s disease. Everyone from the American Medical Association to the Mayo Clinic is treating the symptoms. An important tenet of acute care medicine is that finding the source of a problem and fixing it is always preferred to speciously treating side effects., recognize that collegiality between colleagues is a necessary ingredient for team success.
I remember one of my attendings once saying, as he flipped a series of switches in vain seeking a light to illuminate the patient’s bed from above, that people who design hospitals should be punished by being treated in them. And one day, they will be. As will you.