Design for wellbeing in healthcare environments: Rehabilitation of stroke patients

This exploratory research presents the first results of a PhD thesis, “DWELL: Design for Wellbeing in healthcare environment”, that focus on the contribution of architecture to the well-being of rehabilitation patient, more specifically for stroke patients. These long-term patients have a particular relation to healthcare spaces that become spaces for (re)learning skills and abilities they lost because of their stroke. This focus will not be limited to the well-being of stroke patients but extended to the well-being of em- ployees and caregivers, be they formal (doctors, nurses, ...) or informal (close family, relatives, volunteers, ...). The global research project investigates how hospital archi- tecture should more permanently (re)integrate the well-being of these stakeholders when planning and designing environments dedicated to care taking into account de- sirability (of end-users such as patients and caregivers) side-by-side with too-rarely addressed technical feasibility and economic viability from hospital staff.
The first steps consist of conducting in situ observations in a physical rehabilitation service from the CHU hospital located in Belgium in the French speaking part. This service has the capacity of more than 40 beds for long-term patients. The observations follow all type of stakeholders in several spaces of the service that they visit every day. The method chosen for the observation is a mix of “fly on the wall” method (capturing events within a space, in this case through sketches) and shadowing method (follow- ing a person in their daily activities). Based on everything we've collected (notebooks, speeches, sketches), we will be able to gain a better understanding of the context that concerns us and the elements for thinking about the architecture of hospital spaces and their relationship with users. The preliminary results will also be used to identify areas and profiles of interest for further research.