Homeliness in Health Care: The Role of Everyday Designing

Duque, Melisa; Pink, Sarah; Sumartojo, Shanti; Vaughan, Laurene

doi:10.1080/17406315.2020.1757381

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The ethnographic accounts presented above attend to comforting practices in psychiatric care that emerge through daily interactions which both follow familiar everyday patterns (such as walking in corridors and opening doors) but are characterized by uncertainties that are specific to this context. By developing an understanding of comforting practices of care as emergent from these contingent circumstances, we recognize forms of everyday designing (Duque et al., 2020) for wellbeing that staff continually develop to creatively navigate routines and spaces in a context that can be highly acute and unpredictable. The gerund form of comfort ing is helpful furthermore to emphasize comfort as a practice in continual making.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, through a design anthropological lens, we propose that design has a dual role in providing comfort in psychiatric care environments; through the practice of architecture design, and, in the practices of staff and patients when designing everyday interventions for wellbeing (Duque et al., 2020; Pink et al., 2020).…”

Section: Introduction: Creating a Comforting Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Everyday comforting practices in psychiatric hospital environments: A design anthropology approach

Duque

Annemans

Pink

et al. 2020

Psychiatric Ment Health Nurs

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Accessible Summary What is known on the subject Comfort as a conceptual and lived experience is essential in psychiatric hospital contexts and for overall mental health wellbeing. Comfort is a valuable aspect when designing hospitals and built environments for psychiatric care. What the paper adds to existing knowledge This article presents the results from a Design Anthropology study at four Psychiatric Units co‐located in a newly built regional hospital based on 126 ethnographic interviews with staff, within which 63 participants mentioned the importance of comfort in generating environments conducive to wellbeing. An in‐depth qualitative understanding of comforting practices, as emergent forms of everyday care. These may receive less attention within more established interventions from organisational models of care (e.g., Safewards) and might appear to be implicit gestures of courtesy. However, they contribute to meaningful encounters and contribute to individual and organisational wellbeing in psychiatric care. What are the implications for practice This paper builds on comfort theories and demonstrates implications for practice through ethnographic examples. Comfort, often unnoticed until it is absent, needs to be maintained through continuous “small” but intentional acts of care. These constitute a finely tuned repertoire of everyday comforting practices of care at psychiatric contexts. Corridors and doors are presented as spaces where people have brief interactions that can contribute to everyday comforting experiences. Comfort is discussed in dialogue with existing literatures from psychiatric nursing, healthcare building design and design anthropology. Implicit and improvised practices of care that foster comforting environments have vital potential to support institutionally endorsed models of care (e.g., Safewards). The article proposes that design has a dual role for comforting environments in psychiatric care; (a) through the practice of architectural design and (b) through the practices of staff when creating everyday comforting interactions for wellbeing. Abstract Introduction Creating a comforting environment is essential for delivering psychiatric care. While healthcare organisations explicitly implement care models and adapt the physical environment, attention to staff's implicit everyday practice is limited. Aim Developing a design anthropology approach tailored specifically to the research site, we examine the social and physical environment to unpack how staff integrate both—implicit comforting interventions, and the explicit measures taken by the organisation—into their everyday practices of psychiatric care. Method Design and sensory ethnography, using extended observations and “walking tours” were undertaken with 126 staff members. A thematic analysis was conducted on all visual and audio material. Results Staff's everyday implicit care practices and situated design decisions provide a comforting environment for patients, visitors and staff. Discussion Implicit practices combin...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Creating a Comforting Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday comforting practices in psychiatric hospital environments: A design anthropology approach

Duque

Annemans

Pink

et al. 2020

Psychiatric Ment Health Nurs

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The video materials provided an audio-visual account of the performative research encounters and with reference to our interest in this article, the devices participants used, their spatial distribution, participants modes of accessing content with them, and the affective and sensory dimensions of these everyday activities. In partnership with the project team, we also developed responsive everyday design interventions (Duque et al, 2019) with participants as they demonstrated and experimented with smart technologies. For example, we explored how to use the commands to access participants’ favourite music genres and groups, trivia, jokes, local news, or ask questions about topics ranging from the gender of Google to what the weather was like that day.…”

Section: Methodology and Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation, wellbeing and Digital Voice Assistants: Older people and Google devices

et al. 2021

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Digital Voice Assistants (DVAs) like Google Home provide automated news, media and other content directly into the home. In this article, we outline how Google Home’s content delivery can support the wellbeing and independence of older people. We argue that automated media provided by DVAs enrols older people in a dialectic relationship with the automated content and feminised conversation they deliver, uniquely performed within people’s own everyday life circumstances. We demonstrate this by drawing on ethnographic insights generated during a trial of smart home technologies with older Australian households who are ‘ageing in place’ in regional New South Wales. For most participants, the trial was their first encounter with DVAs and the modes of media and content delivery including for music, news, weather, trivia, jokes, facts and images. While DVAs bring new experiences via content, communication and companionship, they are also subverted, ignored or transformed as people improvise to make them ‘fit’ within their homes and lives. These dynamics underpin how DVAs, automated content delivery and user’s interactions can support people’s sense of wellness and their independent daily practices at home.

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“…The prioritisation of cleanliness is, of course, related to concerns of infection control that presents an ongoing challenge to the use of softer furnishings (Duque et al . 2020; Gardiner et al .…”

Section: Imparting Care Through the Built Environment: Design Intent ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unburdening expectation and operatingbetween: architecture in support of palliative care

McLaughlan

George

2022

Med Humanities

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The role of design and materials in the enactment and experience of healthcare has gained increasing attention across the fields of evidence-based design, architecture, anthropology, sociology and cultural geography. Evidence-based design, specifically, seeks to understand the ways in which the built environment can support the healing process. In the context of palliative care, however, the very measure of healing differs vastly. Physicians Mount and Kearney suggest that ‘it is possible to die healed’, and that such healing can be facilitated through the provision of ‘a secure environment grounded in a sense of connectedness’ (2003: 657). Acknowledging this critical difference raises important questions around the various ways through which the built environment might support healing, but also about the potential of architecture to impart care. This paper reports on 15 interviews with architects, experienced in the design of palliative care settings, from the UK, USA and Australia, to provide a deeper understanding of the questions being asked within the briefing processes for these facilities, the intentions embedded in the ways that architects respond, and the kinds of compromises deemed allowable (by various stakeholders) within the procurement process. Our findings suggest that palliative care architects often respond to two briefs, one explicit and the other unspoken. Design responses in relation to the first include: formally expressing a differentiation in the philosophy of care (signalling difference), attention to quality, extending comfort and providing ‘moments’. The second relates to the unburdening of palliative care facilities from their associative baggage and responding to the tension between the physical and imaginative inhabitation of space. In revealing the presence of this hidden brief, and the relationship between the two, this paper invites a broader discussion regarding the capacity of architecture to support palliative care patients, their families and staff.

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Homeliness in Health Care: The Role of Everyday Designing

Cited by 18 publications

References 31 publications

Everyday comforting practices in psychiatric hospital environments: A design anthropology approach

Everyday comforting practices in psychiatric hospital environments: A design anthropology approach

Automation, wellbeing and Digital Voice Assistants: Older people and Google devices

Unburdening expectation and operatingbetween: architecture in support of palliative care

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