Blog Contribution by NIHD Board Member for Education Elizabeth Johnson, PhD, MS-CRM, RN, Assistant Professor at the Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing - Montana State University.
48 hours, 4 teams, one mission: design and operationally plan a new facility that rises to the complex challenges of healthcare delivery. During the 2023 PDC Student Design Challenge, students tackled the time-pressured charrette to design a nurse wellness facility for Banner Health (Phoenix, AZ) ahead of the PDC Summit conference.
Alongside architecture and engineering students/faculty from Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Penn State, and Clemson, the students toured a real shell facility and worked incredibly hard in collaborative teams for two days in order to deliver an 11-minute business case of their envisioned facility design. The business case included renderings of the wellness facility, population health needs assessment and integration of this assessment into design conceptual approach, and operational considerations such as budget and staffing. With the generous support of the Nursing Institute of Healthcare Design, AIA, AAH, and McCarthy Building Companies, Montana State University Mark & Robyn Jones College of Nursing was honored to send the clinical team members for the charette.
Katlin Tonkin, Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) student, was a member of the first place team, and Gina Marquardt, CNL student- College of Nursing clinical faculty, was a member of the second place team. Tory Nero, CNL student, and Amanda Stone, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student, were each part of the runner-up teams. These students from Big Sky country provided even bigger ideas, dreams, and inspiration for reimagining wellness to promote nursing recruitment and retention during the national nursing shortage and burnout crisis endemic in the largest healthcare workforce.
Amanda Stone provided her reflection on this incredible experience through the Designing Care: On Air podcast episode Pressure Test: Facility of the Future and the benefits derived that will she will carry with her into her clinical practice as a nurse practitioner. Some of her key takeaways included the importance of exposure to design team roles, such as architects, as a nurse to better understand the origins of design concepts in healthcare projects.
Design practicality is paramount according to Stone, which includes access to resources and ensuring patient-facing elements are functional and enhance nursing delivered care rather than hindering it. Through the PDC Student Design Challenge, Stone was able to bring forth nursing theory and practice into the functionality of the new nursing wellness facility while challenging herself with facilitating effective communication with her team members and comprehensive logistics planning as a nurse leader.