Employees, patients, lab technicians, visitors, pharmacists, new staff, etc. The types of people that enter a hospital premise are varied, hence welcoming this diversity with care, reassurance, and warmth is essential. Floor plans of many hospitals are generally complex, and sometimes even intimidating. Visitors often get lost in the maze and get anxious and annoyed when they are supposed to feel calm and welcomed. Since today’s hospital premise consists of several different buildings housing several different facilities, a carefully planned and well-thought-of healthcare signage is key; signage that creates a comforting and familiar experience for patients as well as for visitors who visit them.
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The Need for Effective Signage
Hospitals and healthcare centers are sprawling; finding one’s way through is often a herculean task. Effective signage in healthcare settings is crucial; since medical centers are a meeting ground for a diverse set of user groups including management and staff, doctors and nurses, patients and visitors, suppliers, and other staff, directing them to the right areas in the campus is extremely important. The right signage can not only help visitors navigate easily through the confusing environment, but also share important health-related information, improves patient intake procedures, and reduces wait times.
Must-Have Features
Since hospitals are large, complex buildings, healthcare signage helps various kinds of people easily find their way around it. For healthcare signage to be effective, here are five must-haves:
1. Integrated Design: An effective healthcare signage is one that incorporates an integrated design. If it doesn't provide the right cues at the right places, the whole purpose is lost. Healthcare signage needs to include a variety of elements: exterior sign solutions that direct people to the right building/department or car park, patient information solutions that guide patients to important areas inside the building, notice boards that mention emergency requirements, displays that exhibit daily or weekly menus in the canteen, compliance requirements and hospital procedures for employees, doctor directories and calendars for easy scheduling, and more.
2. Clear Content: No matter what kind of signage – wayfinding, wall murals, displays, or notice boards – the primary aspect is content. Did you know? Hospitals lose around $12 billion a year due to inefficient communication. Healthcare signage needs to offer clear instructions in order for the person to take the desired action and reach the desired location. A doctor should be able to reach the emergency ward in time. A supplier should be able to find his way through to the pharmacy. Families should be able to quickly navigate to the patient ward. An external technician should easily be able to get to the lab.
3. Changeability – The hospital environment is constantly changing. One of the most important aspects of healthcare signage is to keep it current and updated. Some signs require frequent updating such as “on-duty” notices, activity boards, notices about emergency conditions, or even the signs with names and availability of doctors. Therefore, it is important to have signages that can be changed quickly and easily with just a flick of the thumb without costing too much to the hospitals.
4. Workflow Management: Healthcare signage with robust built-in workflow management ensures the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right place in the right form. This is especially important for employees and support staff as it streamlines daily operations provides relevant information, displays current policies and procedures, helps increase their morale, and keeps them engaged in their jobs. Reports suggest that the right signage improves employee productivity by 20-25%.
5. Enhance your brand image through signages: Your selection of colours and fonts for your signages should be a reflection of your brand. The consistency in their use will create your brand image as the user navigates through the premise. The visual impact helps the users to relate to your brand. Other elements like wall graphics, art or fabric frames, etc. can be used to display your brand information in a subtle way.
Signage that Welcomes
Patient satisfaction scores in hospitals across the world are generally low as they often get lost or disoriented. Missed or late out-patient appointments are fairly common. Hospital staff spends thousands of hours each year escorting visitors to the right areas within the hospital premise — ineffective healthcare signage clearly is a global challenge. Since visits to healthcare facilities are often stressful for visitors and patients seeking care, clear and effective healthcare signage can help alleviate this stress and complement the hospital’s healing environment. If you’re looking to re-design your healthcare signage, make sure it is warm, pleasing and welcoming, and in line with the emotional and caring tone that your hospital wants to set.
Storefronts and public facilities have a legal and ethical responsibility to post compliant wayfinding signs and graphics throughout their buildings. Wayfinding signage provides directional information to the guests, employees, disabled people, and anyone else who may not be familiar with your building or where essential rooms are located inside it.
Here are the top 5 things your wayfinding signs and graphics should accomplish to become fully compliant.
1) Clear and Understandable Signage
The Disability Discrimination Act wants wayfinding signage and graphics to be easy to read and understand, especially for disabled people. They recommend having contrasting colours in the signage design to make the signs easy to spot. The signage should also have braille and other tactile features to accommodate the blind.
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Post the signage at a reasonable height for people to see and touch without any problems. A seeing person should look at your signage and immediately understand the wayfinding messaging conveyed. A blind person should be able to feel the braille elements and understand them as well.
In addition, try to stay consistent with the colours and fonts on the signage used throughout your facility. The design consistency indicates to people that they are within the same facility and not somewhere else unknown.
Check the DDA website to learn more about their requirements and recommendations regarding wayfinding signage in public facilities. Then you can make sure your facility’s signage is in complete compliance with DDA policies.
2) Give Directions to the Bathrooms
Public facilities must have bathrooms for men and women to use. Everyone experiences a call of nature at one time or another. They need to know a nearby bathroom is available to feel comfortable and unembarrassed in your facility. So make sure you have clear wayfinding signage to point people in the direction of the nearest public bathrooms available.
Bathroom signage is known for its blue background and white text font and designs. Since people immediately associate these colours with bathroom signage, it won’t take them long to recognise the messaging of this particular wayfinding signage. Therefore, we recommend you choose the same colours for your bathroom signage too.
3) Point Out Hazardous or Dangerous Areas
Public safety should be a key priority for any property owner or manager. You are responsible for ensuring the personal safety of everyone who lawfully steps foot onto your property, especially if it has hazardous areas. Failing to warn people of potential hazards could result in a lawsuit or worse if they get hurt on your property.
Hazard signs typically have a yellow background and black text font. Most people already associate these colours with warning signs, caution signs, and hazard signs because they are standard colours used for this type of signage. So it won’t take long for those colours to capture people’s attention.
Graphics are good to use because they can clearly illustrate the kind of danger involved in a particular area of your building. Some examples of hazardous areas include construction sites, wet flooring, laboratories, waste processing, industrial facilities, etc.
4) Highlight the Important Rooms and Areas
Every facility has rooms with different levels of importance. Your job is to show people where the essential rooms are located, such as the cafeteria, emergency storage rooms, kitchens, classrooms, medical rooms, etc.
Imagine a visitor coming to your facility for the first time and not knowing where anything is located. You’ll want to have all the necessary wayfinding signage posted to ensure that your visitors can find their way to any room or area of your facility without asking for directions.
5) Mark the Path to the Exits Clearly
Every public facility must have emergency exits in case of a fire, water leak, or some other emergency on the property. Furthermore, you must have exit signage posted throughout the facility, so people can quickly figure out the direction of the nearest exit. That way, you can have a safe and orderly evacuation without people tumbling or stampeding over each other.
Emergency exit signage doesn’t necessarily need specific colours, but we recommend a red background and white text font. Red is a popular colour used on most emergency exit signage, so people may recognise it in your facility faster if an emergency evacuation occurs.
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