NEW TRENDS IN HOSPITAL DESIGN
PAUL HAUN M. D.1, and
Z. M. LEBENSOHN M. D.1
1 Neuropsychiatry Division, Veterans Administration, Washington, D. C.
The one dominant note motivating our entire thinking on hospital design has been, "How does this or that feature improve the patient-doctor relationship?" We have not thought in terms of handling large numbers on a production line basis. This is best left to the automotive geniuses in Detroit. We have wanted to make our hospitals places where veterans can be treated not only with scientific skill but with human warmth and understanding attention. We have wanted our hospitals to instill a feeling of security and confidence in the patient and thus act as a silent, but ever active, force in therapy. We want our Hospital of the Future to be a "doctor's hospital" or, better still, a "patient's hospital"—not an "administrator's hospital."
Psychiatry has made enormous strides in the last 50 years. It now occupies a respected position among the medical disciplines. Psychiatry is no longer relegated to the back wards of forbidding "asylums"—but makes its contribution felt on every ward of the modern hospital.
Psychiatry has made great progress; we want its architecture to keep pace.
