Resilient Hospital Design: From Crimean War to COVID-19

Objectives: Serious COVID-19 nosocomial infection has demonstrated a need to design our health services in a different manner. Triggered by the current crisis and the interest in rapid deployable hospital, this article discusses how hospital building layouts can be improved to streamline the patient pathways and thus to reduce the risk of hospital-related infections. Another objective of this work is to explore the possibility to develop flexible and scalable hospital building layouts through modular construction. This enables hospitals to better cope with different future demands and thereby enhance the resilience of the healthcare facilities. Background: During the first wave of COVID-19, approximate one-seventh to one-fifth COVID-19 patients and majority of infected healthcare workers acquired the disease in NHS hospitals. Similar issues emerged during the Crimean War (1853–1856) when more soldiers died from infectious diseases rather than of battlefield casualties in Scutari Hospital. This led to an important collaborative work between Florence Nightingale, who looked into this problem statistically, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed the rapid deployment Renkioi Hospital which yielded a death rate 90% lower than that in Scutari Hospital. While contemporary medical research and practice have moved beyond Nightingale’s concept of contagion, challenges of optimizing hospital building layouts to support healing and effectively combat nosocomial infections still pose elusive problems that require further investigation. Methods: Through case study investigations, this article evaluates the risk of nosocomial infections of airborne transmissions under different building layouts, and this provides essential data for infection control in the new-build or refurbished healthcare projects. Results: Improved hospital layout can be achieved through reconfiguration of rooms and concourse. Design interventions through evidence-based infection risk analysis can reduce congestion and provide extra separation and compartmentalization which will contribute the reduced nosocomial infection rate. Conclusions: A resilient hospital shall be able to cope with unexpected circumstances and be flexible to change when new challenges arise, without compromising the safety and well-being of frontline medical staff and other patients. Such an organizational resilience depends on not only flexible clinical protocols but also flexible hospital building layouts. The latter allows hospitals to get better prepared for rapidly changing patient expectations, medical advances, and extreme weather events. The reconfigurability of an existing healthcare facility can be further enhanced through modular construction, standardization of building components, and additional space considered.