Healthcare Environment Evaluation (POPH90299)

The increased recognition of the complex, dynamic, interdisciplinary and multi-purpose nature of healthcare environments, calls for a deeper and more critical understanding of its key dimensions (physical workspaces design, virtual work-spaces and leadership & management practices). There is increasing evidence of the effects of healthcare environments on healthcare staff work (clinical and non-clinical), satisfaction, productivity, performance and health and wellbeing. Hence this subject focuses on how Healthcare Environments can better support the healthcare workforce using evaluations.

Although healthcare environment evaluation approaches and tools exist, engagement in existing evaluation approaches is limited, and the utilisation of evaluation findings in healthcare environment decision-making is variable. The subject content draws upon the fields of health program evaluation, work environmental evaluation, building design evaluation, and environmental psychology.

This Intensive Subject will run over 4 days over an 8 week period to enable students time between each day to build new knowledge and skills and to complete assessments as required.

To optimise student experiential learning opportunities, the subject adopts a modified flipped classroom approach, where: 1) students prior to lectures view and reflect upon videos on key current debates on Healthcare Environment Evaluation by academics, industry partners and healthcare practitioners; and 2) students engage with and experience subject content with tutorials focused on ‘What makes collaborative healthcare environments work?’, providing real-world insights into healthcare environment evaluation. Exemplars of healthcare environments will be studied from settings such as acute care, aged care and primary community care settings.

This interdisciplinary intensive subject is led and coordinated by the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. It will be available to graduates undertaking non-design and design courses to build their skills and knowledge to plan, design, conduct and utilise healthcare environment evaluation approaches in diverse multi-purpose healthcare settings.