Significance of planning and designing dental spaces

Usually, dental offices are boring, dull and colorless spaces. However, the trend has changed over the past few years, during which the potential impact of medical spaces on patient psychological health has been widely accepted.
Healthcare interior design has evolved dramatically over the past two decades. Dental spaces are being transformed into cleaner, cheerful environments with the help of contemporary interiors, pleasing colors, interesting textures, and compatible artwork.
Moreover, innovative dental spaces complement patients’ speedy recovery process and enhance their clinical experience, resulting in better treatment outcomes. Needless to say, improvement in oral health is a major contributor to patients’ overall health and eventually, their well-being. An unavoidable need to provide comfort and compassionate patient care, alongside satisfying their clinical needs, is attributable to the growing implication for planning and designing dental offices.

Dental office design impacts productivity

There are several concerns regarding the level of impact of the dental space design on the overall productivity of its employees. There is a great difference in absolute productivity among doctors who are being allocated a private office and a shared office. This indirectly impacts patient care as a private space always facilitates confidential communication personally or over the voice calls.
Similarly, allocating separate preparatory rooms, and surgical &treatment rooms as well as recovery rooms for the patients could help ease their anxiety surrounding the medical procedure. Although several other factors contribute to overall productivity, a smart, implementation model has always proven to have resulted in higher absolute productivity of a medical practitioner.
“According to a survey conducted by Dental Products Report in 2013, 69% doctors believe that patients see office design as a reflection of their competence in the dentist and the practice as a whole.”
The below illustration demonstrates the results of a survey in a graphical format. The survey was commissioned to find out the major reasons behind dental patients visiting the same office on a regular basis. If you observe carefully, most of the factors that are included in the rating are directly or indirectly associated with the dental office design. For example, cleanliness of office, which means low clutter, is a result of better office design. This implies the importance of an innovative interior design that not just attracts patients but also keeps them visiting your office regularly.

 

Focus of Interior designers in dental space design and implementation

Interior designers aim at creating the best oral healthcare spaces that help doctors provide quality and interactive services to patients. One of the basic criteria is to provide adequate patient privacy and promote patient dignity. To achieve this, interior designers consider the following factors while designing dental spaces.

• Choose images and artwork that help create a healing and restorative environment.
• Design separate spaces for patients who are under preparatory and recovery phases to promote patient dignity.
• Plan waiting areas in such as way that helps ensure patient privacy, and facilitate social interactions with friends and family.
• Provide access to indirect sunlight and more ambient indoor lighting to produce a softer and refined environment for the patient and companions.
• Provide access to natural daylight so as to help patients relieve from stress and anxiety.
• Prefer the use of natural elements in the procedure area to enable positive clinical experience for patients.
• Imbue more sophisticated looks into the floors, walls and ceilings.

According to an expert interior designer, “non-implementation of a sophisticated dental space design is nothing but higher costs in terms of lost productivity, poor space utilization, increased cabinet and equipment costs, inadequate design documentation, and a lack of aesthetic plan  and a lot more”.
It is a fact that a thoughtful dental office design can not only impact the performance of a doctor in a positive manner but also helps create a successful practice.
 
 
Source: Design Ergonomics, What Dental Patients Want
Image courtesy: Shutterstock