Choosing The Right Doors for Hospital Design
Choosing The Right Doors for Hospital Design
Choosing The Right Doors for Hospital Design
Doors in the hospital setting are more important than you might think. They offer security, privacy, and can incorporate germ-fighting properties in both the material, handles, and swing. Beyond that, doors are the gateway into the hospital and all of its areas. Which means it will be the first experience and opportunity to make a good first impression.
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If you’re a healthcare designer interested in germ reduction through design, patient satisfaction as well as form and function, it’s important that you choose the right door for each project.
Selecting The Door
When selecting a door for a particular space, there are many factors to take into consideration. The door material, the door handle, and also how the door swings. Each consideration will impact things like infection control.
Here is a list of the four most common door types for medical spaces, when to use them, and other considerations.
swing door
swing doors are the most common of all door types, not just for hospitals, but generally all buildings. It’s simple to operate and universally recognizable. The door is hinged on one side to allow it to swing in or out. These doors are not recommended for tight spaces because the door swings open widely. Opening swing doors can also can air flow to spread particles around, which may not be good for infection control. But swing doors are great for reducing noise levels.
Pocket Door
A pocket door slides into the wall. As the name suggests, it fits into a little ‘pocket’. These doors are ideal for saving space, which can be very beneficial for hospital design. This is because pocket doors not only save space, but also look much clear and integrate more smoothly throughout the building. One major downside to a pocket door is that it does not insulate noise very well. Additionally, pocket doors are often more difficult to repair and maintain.
barn door
A barn door is similar to a pocket door, but instead of sliding into the wall seamlessly, the door is hung from mounted sliders. The door and the sliders are completely visible, even in the open position. These doors are easier to maintain compared to pocket doors, but can be louder when operating.
operating room Doors
Operating room (OR) doors are specially designed doors that are pivoted so they are double action and able to open easily on either side. These doors typically have a glass or plastic panel for viewing and communication. These panels are important. Research shows that opening OR doors too frequently can increase the risk of infection. OR doors also usually have stainless steel kick plates on both sides to make them durable.
The kind of doors used in a healthcare environment matter. Make sure to consider the materials, handles and swing when making your selection.
Marie Wikoff is the creator of Wikoff Design Studio based out of Reno, Nevada. Her expertise in healthcare design has helped modernize healthcare organizations locally, regionally, and internationally, improving patient experience and outcomes. Her credentials include Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC), American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designer (CHID), the National Council of Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) and LEED AP. Contact Marie Wikoff
Sources:
Mears, Simon C., et al. “Door Opening Affects Operating Room Pressure During Joint Arthroplasty.” Orthopedics, vol. 38, no. 11, 1 Nov. , doi:10./--07.
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Interior Doors for Healthcare Projects
Healthcare facilities face a range of challenges, from the pressure to reduce costs to dealing with pandemics. Designing a hospital or other healthcare facility requires an understanding of these demands and products that meet them. Great healthcare facility design—which includes great doors—makes a difference.
The AspiroTM door from Masonite Architectural can be customized to meet the intense demands of healthcare projects. Here we take a look at the aesthetic and performance benefits of Masonite’s AspiroTM series interior wood doors.
How Should Doors Perform in Healthcare Environments?
An article from Whole Building Design Guide explains how architectural design choices can be important factors for “attracting and retaining the best doctors and nurses, the most successful HMOs and insurance plans, and the most patients.” The author goes on to say, “An aesthetically pleasing facility is a key aspect of the perceived quality of care.” With that in mind, each design choice you make matters to the ultimate success of a healthcare facility.
Meeting construction client demands means limiting construction and design costs, and working on tight schedules, all while delivering a high quality result. You need interior doors that can meet many needs at once.
Doors Tough Enough for Healthcare Facilities
Doors in a hospital or healthcare facility need durability without being too heavy. Picture how people move around a hospital. Staff may walk very quickly, while patients with various ailments may move slowly. People are pushing carts, gurneys and wheelchairs, or carrying things. Nurses and orderlies might open doors by elbowing or kicking them.
To stand up to heavy use in a healthcare setting, an interior door needs:
Quality construction
The right core type
Durable surfaces
You can find many options for all three within the AspiroTM series.
Security Doors That Provide Attractive Openings
In healthcare facilities, people want to see evidence of security to feel safe, but the environment still has to feel welcoming. Features like security cameras and biometric locks enhance security, as do features of the doors themselves.
Attack resistant openings have become more and more in-demand, especially for public spaces. An attack resistant door opening will include:
A heavy-duty core
Shooter attack glass
A metal frame
High-quality hardware
Masonite Architectural incorporates all of these elements into its highly attractive and customizable AspiroTM doors.
Healthcare Door Features That Contribute to Calm Environments
Healthcare facilities must create a calming effect, both to encourage healing of patients and for the comfort of visitors. As a designer, you contribute to this effect though light, color and acoustics.
Each of these elements comes into play when choosing doors.
STC-rated doors reduce sound transfer
Laminate or paint color choices allow doors to fit into the perfect calming palette
Lite openings contribute to daylighting, which supports healing
AspiroTM doors offer numerous choices in each of these areas.
Hygiene and Interior Doors
Perhaps no element of healthcare facility design matters more than hygiene to reduce the spread of illnesses. Many bacteria and viruses can linger on surfaces, especially those that are used frequently and touched by many people—like interior doors.
These features reduce the chances that healthcare doors will spread germs:
Laminates allow for smooth, easy-to-clean surfaces
Clean edges eliminate areas where germs would get trapped
automatic doors can reduce the need to touch them entirely
Masonite Architectural offers AspiroTM doors in a wide range of high-pressure decorative laminates (HDPL).
Placement of Doors in Healthcare Facilities
The placement of a door could have implications for the visibility of protected patient information, and therefore HIPAA compliance. Factors that affect visibility and potentially privacy may include:
Which ways the doors swings and the resulting sight lines
Whether the door contains lites and the type of glass used
Whether to place a door in a given opening at all
Masonite Architectural’s interior wood doors come in a broad range of choices, including aesthetic and performance features, making it possible to find all of the doors required for a healthcare project from one source.
Learn More About Masonite Aspiro™ Doors for Healthcare
Take a look at a project that used Masonite Architectural healthcare doors, Clarity Child Guidance Center, and use the DOORSELECTOR™ tool to learn more about options for AspiroTM doors.
Five Crucial requirements for hospital doors
Before you select a hospital door, ask questions about these important qualities
Hospitals require the utmost standards of hygiene and cleanliness. Yet hospital design extends far beyond increasing hygiene.
The company is the world’s best hospital room door supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
Efficiency, cost and speed are all key concerns when designing any part of a modern hospital - particularly when you consider tightening budgets and an overburdened healthcare sector.
With these factors in mind, we’ve broken down the design requirements for hospital swing doors into 5 crucial segments for your consideration.
1) what is the weight & durability of the hospital door?
For most applications, such as around your home and in office spaces, the weight of a door is completely ignored. This should not be the case with hospital traffic doors.
Three major factors make weight an important consideration for hospital door design:
The frequency of people travelling through the door
The speed at which they are travelling, and
The way that they open the door.
A hospital Emergency Department will have high frequency, high speed traffic, day and night. That means all doors need to open quickly, yet still be durable enough to take repeated impacts.
There is however a more crucial factor: the way people navigate through hospital doors. in fact it isn’t uncommon to hear thermal traffic doors referred to as 'crash doors' thanks to the punishment they are subjected to.
In a lot of cases, such as when nurses are wheeling beds, wheel chairs and trolleys through hospital doors, they travel backwards using their shoulder, heel or backside to push through the door. Even when travelling forward, opening a heavy door while also pushing, towing or carrying an item can be very difficult. This is something Equipment Manager, Troy, at St John of God, Ballarat Hospital identified as a major issue for his workplace.
“The doors were far too heavy, and presented a concern in terms of ease of use, weight and functionality.”
Strain injury was becoming a major concern at Ballarat hospital with their old, heavy timber doors. Troy even goes on to say that “there was a possibility we would have to decommission suites.” This shows how what may seem a minor concern can become a massive roadblock to the effectiveness of the hospital.
Remax Products were contacted to install Hospital Theatre swing doors to replace all timber hospital doors.
2) What materials are the hospital doors made from?
Luckily, timber doors are no longer the only option. New technology has allowed doorway and barrier companies to create one-piece polymer doors with high-density foam cores, offering a lightweight, strong, insulating and durable alternative.
Some polymer doors are even ultra high pressure filled, offering a density comparable to that of a timber door with an added, impressive thermal R-value of 3. These polymer doors can help save on air conditioning and heating bills throughout the hospital, as well as increasing efficiency and safety.
But polymer doors offer another significant advantage for hospitals: the added benefit for hygiene. Polymer panels have no gaps or joins and are impervious to moisture and acid petroleum products. This is crucial in a hospital where any chip in a timber door can create a harbourage for undesirable pathogens, and as we know, Surgical Site Infections (SSIs) are the second most common site of healthcare associated infections (HAIs)*.
There are several steps that have to be connected to result in infection for SSIs. The initial introduction of microbial pathogens occurs most often during the surgical procedure performed in the Operating Theatre (OT), so it makes sense to assess this risk influenced by characteristics of the healthcare facility (amongst other characteristics) and by method of elimination, cut out all possible risks of harbouring pathogens including timber doors.
A further advantage of most polymer doors is that the colour is evenly impregnated throughout the door. This means that the door maintains integrity and colour even with the toughest use and wear.
The benefits of a polymer door with its high durability and insulation qualities make it the better choice for hospitals looking to invest in their facility’s future.
3) How quickly do the doors open and close?
Speed is crucial in a hospital, where decisions need to be lightning fast and response times can be the difference between life and death. That's why it's so important that every part of the hospital is designed for optimal speed and efficiency, while not compromising on hygiene or durability.
The speed of a swing door depends on its weight, the resistance provided by the bearings, pressure and spring buffers on the door, and the force applied to open it. By keeping the weight to a minimum, you can immediately increase the door's opening speed.
Having the door on durable yet smooth mountings is another step. In fact, many hospitals rely on a quad-action opening mechanism, where double-hinged frames allow the door to open through 180 degrees each way. This means that traffic is equally unimpeded regardless of its direction.
To add to this, faster doors also mean less time for transfer of pathogens or other unwanted intruders through the doorway.
4) Does the door have a tight seal?
In any building, a door’s seal is important; in a hospital even more so. A tight seal is essential for hygiene measures, to protect against, dust, insects and contaminants.
It's crucial that a hospital door's seal is not only airtight and resilient, but also has very little space in its construction for harbouring unwanted contaminants. The seal can be one of the places where buildup is most likely to occur, particularly because it is the contact surface that rubs against the floor and ceiling, but also because it is often made of rubber, which is more susceptible to residue buildup than either polymer or stainless steel.
It is also important to ensure that your door is corrosion resistant, because corrosion will not only affect performance but also provide a perfect opportunity for contamination. This is largely the reason why hospitals and healthcare facilities use polymer and stainless steel for their hospital doors.
The seal on other doors around the hospital, including any roller doors to the external environment, should also be closely scrutinised.
5) What additional options are available?
Clearly not every hospital has the same layout or the same budget. That's why it's important that the door you choose has a standard option and then offers particular features as add-ons (keeping in mind that some add-ons will preserve the life the door for longer, which reduces maintenance costs down the line. So although you may be saving money right now by avoiding add-ons, you may need to think about your maintenance budget in the future).
6 key optional add-ons you should consider are:
Spring buffers: Pretensioned springs used to absorb impact and allow doors to open gently under stress, spring buffers give the door a reasonably uniform opening sequence (regardless of the pressure being applied to it), and also preserve the door against heavier impacts. Options will often include both polymer and stainless steel kick plates.
Mounting options: Most swing doors will be offered with a normal mounting plate but should also have the option for a support frame. This is a frame designed for openings that don’t have the requisite strength to support the door and the traffic flowing through it.
The support frame should easily fit to the inside of the doorframe to create a structurally sound framework. A well-designed support frame will come with bearings pre-mounted in the factory to ensure simple installation.
Windows:
Windows in hospital doors are crucial to know what is on the other side of the door, particularly when moving patients or fragile equipment, and all good swing door suppliers will offer you a range of windows for your door of choice.
For example Remax Doors
offers window frames in black, yellow, or white; the windows are available in clear, frosted or embedded with signage; and double windows can be fitted per leaf.
Preferably window choice will include double-glazed windows to assist with insulation. Good suppliers will also offer a window blind built into the glass of the window which provides privacy for hospital theatres when required but are sealed within the glass and will not harbour bacteria nor dust.
Push plates: Despite earlier mentioning that many hospital staff open the door in an unorthodox manner, it is still important to provide push plates to create an attractive focal point for entering personal. This encourages everyone to concentrate their contact with the door in one place, reducing grime to a single area that can be more easily cleaned. Consultants at Remax Doors often suggest adding stainless steel push plates on lighter coloured doors for this reason.
Kick plates:
Stainless steel / polymer kick plates assist with impact caused by trolleys / beds and pedestrian traffic while also maintaining the look of the door by helping to prevent scuffing on the door at foot level.
Talk to us about selecting your ideal hospital doors
If you would like to learn more about the various traffic doors available for hospitals, contact Remax Doors online or call us on 010 221.
Notes:
*According to the American College of Surgeons, Kimberly-Clark, and more information on SSIs can be found here at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
Hospital Door Hardware Requirements and Best Practices
Each door in a hospital or healthcare facility serves a unique function for safety and ease of use. So, it’s no wonder why hospital door hardware requirements are in place. To comply with ADA standards or iHFG guidelines, various areas of a healthcare facility WILL require very specific parts to be installed.
Take, for instance, a patient's bathroom compared to staff restrooms. The doors must open out into the room in patient restrooms instead of swinging inward into the bathroom.
This hospital door hardware standard is in place in case of an emergency patient rescue situation. However, staff restrooms do not have to follow those requirements.
This is just one prime example of why it’s critical to identify doors in healthcare facilities by their function and purpose.
Safety Practices for Hospital Door Hardware
Safety in any medical facility is important for patients, staff, and visitors alike. The proper hospital door hardware can prevent unwanted entry, exit, or ease of access for specific needs.
Knobs used to be the industry standard, but levers are rapidly replacing them. Lever hardware allows for swift movement through the building.
Features like recessed trim, concealed mounting, and an internal handle can be used for added security and safety. These hidden, built-in door hardware features prevent patients from finding attachment points to self-harm.
Ultimately, it’s important to be flexible and address the safety needs of each individual medical building.
Emergency Access Hospital Door Hardware Recommendations
Emergency hospital door hardware is mandatory for certain rooms that patients use. The iHFG defines these rooms as follows:
- Rooms that are used independently by patients have only one door and are less than 6m2
- Rooms where there are less than 2.5 meters of clear space behind the single door
- Patient Bedrooms, Bathrooms, and Ensuites in Mental Health facilities, or Mental Health
- components of other health facilities
- Secure rooms in mental health facilities.
If a patient were to collapse against the doorframe, medical staff MUST be able to open the door without pushing against the patient. It is recommended to use retractable door stops within flat metal door frames.
Door openings should also consider special equipment that might need to be moved into a patient’s room. Think stretchers, wheelchairs, and any mobility aids.
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