Before you select a hospital door, ask questions about these important qualities
Hospitals require the utmost standards of hygiene and cleanliness. Yet hospital design extends far beyond increasing hygiene.
Efficiency, cost and speed are all key concerns when designing any part of a modern hospital - particularly when you consider tightening budgets and an overburdened healthcare sector.
With these factors in mind, we’ve broken down the design requirements for hospital swing doors into 5 crucial segments for your consideration.
1) What is the weight & durability of the hospital door?
For most applications, such as around your home and in office spaces, the weight of a door is completely ignored. This should not be the case with hospital traffic doors.
Three major factors make weight an important consideration for hospital door design:
- The frequency of people travelling through the door
- The speed at which they are travelling, and
- The way that they open the door.
A hospital Emergency Department will have high frequency, high speed traffic, day and night. That means all doors need to open quickly, yet still be durable enough to take repeated impacts.
There is however a more crucial factor: the way people navigate through hospital doors. in fact it isn’t uncommon to hear thermal traffic doors referred to as 'crash doors' thanks to the punishment they are subjected to.
In a lot of cases, such as when nurses are wheeling beds, wheel chairs and trolleys through hospital doors, they travel backwards using their shoulder, heel or backside to push through the door. Even when travelling forward, opening a heavy door while also pushing, towing or carrying an item can be very difficult. This is something Equipment Manager, Troy, at St John of God, Ballarat Hospital identified as a major issue for his workplace.
“The doors were far too heavy, and presented a concern in terms of ease of use, weight and functionality.”
Strain injury was becoming a major concern at Ballarat hospital with their old, heavy timber doors. Troy even goes on to say that “there was a possibility we would have to decommission suites.” This shows how what may seem a minor concern can become a massive roadblock to the effectiveness of the hospital.
Remax Products were contacted to install 4500 Hospital Theatre swing doors to replace all timber hospital doors.
2) What materials are the hospital doors made from?
Luckily, timber doors are no longer the only option. New technology has allowed doorway and barrier companies to create one-piece polymer doors with high-density foam cores, offering a lightweight, strong, insulating and durable alternative.
Some polymer doors are even ultra high pressure filled, offering a density comparable to that of a timber door with an added, impressive thermal R-value of 3. These polymer doors can help save on air conditioning and heating bills throughout the hospital, as well as increasing efficiency and safety.
But polymer doors offer another significant advantage for hospitals: the added benefit for hygiene. Polymer panels have no gaps or joins and are impervious to moisture and acid petroleum products. This is crucial in a hospital where any chip in a timber door can create a harbourage for undesirable pathogens, and as we know, Surgical Site Infections (SSIs) are the second most common site of healthcare associated infections (HAIs)*.
There are several steps that have to be connected to result in infection for SSIs. The initial introduction of microbial pathogens occurs most often during the surgical procedure performed in the Operating Theatre (OT), so it makes sense to assess this risk influenced by characteristics of the healthcare facility (amongst other characteristics) and by method of elimination, cut out all possible risks of harbouring pathogens including timber doors.
A further advantage of most polymer doors is that the colour is evenly impregnated throughout the door. This means that the door maintains integrity and colour even with the toughest use and wear.
The benefits of a polymer door with its high durability and insulation qualities make it the better choice for hospitals looking to invest in their facility’s future.
3) How quickly do the doors open and close?
Speed is crucial in a hospital, where decisions need to be lightning fast and response times can be the difference between life and death. That's why it's so important that every part of the hospital is designed for optimal speed and efficiency, while not compromising on hygiene or durability.
The speed of a swing door depends on its weight, the resistance provided by the bearings, pressure and spring buffers on the door, and the force applied to open it. By keeping the weight to a minimum, you can immediately increase the door's opening speed.
Having the door on durable yet smooth mountings is another step. In fact, many hospitals rely on a quad-action opening mechanism, where double-hinged frames allow the door to open through 180 degrees each way. This means that traffic is equally unimpeded regardless of its direction.
To add to this, faster doors also mean less time for transfer of pathogens or other unwanted intruders through the doorway.
4) Does the door have a tight seal?
In any building, a door’s seal is important; in a hospital even more so. A tight seal is essential for hygiene measures, to protect against, dust, insects and contaminants.
It's crucial that a hospital door's seal is not only airtight and resilient, but also has very little space in its construction for harbouring unwanted contaminants. The seal can be one of the places where buildup is most likely to occur, particularly because it is the contact surface that rubs against the floor and ceiling, but also because it is often made of rubber, which is more susceptible to residue buildup than either polymer or stainless steel.
It is also important to ensure that your door is corrosion resistant, because corrosion will not only affect performance but also provide a perfect opportunity for contamination. This is largely the reason why hospitals and healthcare facilities use polymer and stainless steel for their hospital doors.
The seal on other doors around the hospital, including any roller doors to the external environment, should also be closely scrutinised.
5) What additional options are available?
Clearly not every hospital has the same layout or the same budget. That's why it's important that the door you choose has a standard option and then offers particular features as add-ons (keeping in mind that some add-ons will preserve the life the door for longer, which reduces maintenance costs down the line. So although you may be saving money right now by avoiding add-ons, you may need to think about your maintenance budget in the future).
6 key optional add-ons you should consider are:
- Spring buffers: Pretensioned springs used to absorb impact and allow doors to open gently under stress, spring buffers give the door a reasonably uniform opening sequence (regardless of the pressure being applied to it), and also preserve the door against heavier impacts. Options will often include both polymer and stainless steel kick plates.
- Mounting options: Most swing doors will be offered with a normal mounting plate but should also have the option for a support frame. This is a frame designed for openings that don’t have the requisite strength to support the door and the traffic flowing through it.
The support frame should easily fit to the inside of the doorframe to create a structurally sound framework. A well-designed support frame will come with bearings pre-mounted in the factory to ensure simple installation. - Windows: Windows in hospital doors are crucial to know what is on the other side of the door, particularly when moving patients or fragile equipment, and all good swing door suppliers will offer you a range of windows for your door of choice.
For example Remax Doors offers window frames in black, yellow, or white; the windows are available in clear, frosted or embedded with signage; and double windows can be fitted per leaf.
Preferably window choice will include double-glazed windows to assist with insulation. Good suppliers will also offer a window blind built into the glass of the window which provides privacy for hospital theatres when required but are sealed within the glass and will not harbour bacteria nor dust.
Push plates: Despite earlier mentioning that many hospital staff open the door in an unorthodox manner, it is still important to provide push plates to create an attractive focal point for entering personal. This encourages everyone to concentrate their contact with the door in one place, reducing grime to a single area that can be more easily cleaned. Consultants at Remax Doors often suggest adding stainless steel push plates on lighter coloured doors for this reason.
- Kick plates: Stainless steel / polymer kick plates assist with impact caused by trolleys / beds and pedestrian traffic while also maintaining the look of the door by helping to prevent scuffing on the door at foot level.
Talk to us about selecting your ideal hospital doors
If you would like to learn more about the various traffic doors available for hospitals, contact Remax Doors online or call us on 1800 010 221.
Notes:
*According to the American College of Surgeons, Kimberly-Clark, and more information on SSIs can be found here at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care