While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the world with two of the most difficult years in recent history, healthcare workers were on the front line of the pandemic and have experienced a completely new level of strain and demand in the workplace. Yet still, healthcare facilities are expected to provide a safe and healthy environment for patients and a positive working experience for staff. Be it a hospital, outpatient facility, PT clinic, pharmacy or lab, the physical and emotional health of the provider has a direct impact on the quality of care delivered.

The average age of today’s nurse is 52 years old. They work 10-to-12 hour shifts, walk numerous miles in one day and experience other physically demanding aspects of their job.

It’s critical for providers to focus on and enhance the ergonomic conditions of their staff’s environment to improve productivity and retention. Improved seating, better work tools, and new technology all contribute to a more ergonomically friendly healthcare space. The not so obvious contributor to employee comfort and health? The floor.

The topic of ergonomics as related to flooring should be comprehensively defined to include comfort, fatigue, musculoskeletal strain, and injury and emotional stress created by noise in the interior environment. Each factor contributes to or detracts from the general wellbeing of the patient, resident, or staff.

Injuries among healthcare workers rank among the highest by industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Musculoskeletal disorders account for one-third of all occupational injuries reported to employers, while back, leg and foot fatigue follow closely behind. It’s a main reason why designers, facility managers, and healthcare administrators are paying more attention to create environments that support the healthcare workforce.

Healthcare Design and Methodical Flooring Specification

Most traditional flooring products provide little, if any, ergonomic relief and can consequently contribute to pain, discomfort, and fatigue in healthcare staff. Flooring performance was once solely measured by durability, maintainability, patient mobility, and affordability. While those characteristics are still important, today we are entering a new age where expectations for a floor are changing and we are asking it do more.

When building and designing a space, the focus of the work environment must be on people and not just about product. It should be about how flooring and other materials can enhance the lives of patients, residents, and staff. This is achieved by specifying a flooring product that is more appropriately designed and engineered for healthcare applications.

Strong Tie Between Built Environment and Wellness

A clear relationship between the built environment and the impact of flooring on nurse wellness was indicated in evidence-based design studies for healthcare facilities conducted by The Center for Health Design. These studies also reveal the effect on the patient experience and health outcomes. A nurse that is not fatigued, stressed, or in pain provides better quality of care at bedside. Similarly, a therapist, pharmacist, or lab technician is more attentive and productive when the workplace provides enhanced ergonomics.

Hospital staff who have experienced ergonomic flooring report better underfoot comfort and relief and also often mention the reduced noise and acoustic properties of the product. Nurses have even told us they requested reassignment to other hospital departments because of the better flooring areas. Furthermore, flooring products that reduce noise and provide superior acoustic properties also support the patient healing process and reveal how ergonomics is playing a much larger role in product specification.

Drawing from lessons learned through evidence-based design research, the direction of designers and architects today is away from the sterile, institutional environment to looks that are more natural, warmer and homeopathic in design. This lends itself to influence from the hospitality industry with the focus on providing a soothing, pleasurable environment for patient, visitors, and staff.

Innovative Technology and Optimal Flooring

One must factor force reduction and energy restitution, or the storing and returning of energy, to understand the science behind a truly ergonomic flooring. Force reduction measures the amount of energy the floor will absorb when stepped on. Energy restitution measures the amount of energy that is returned from the flooring to the body when a step is made. These are the key components to consider when selecting the right flooring for a healthcare setting.

With a softer floor, more energy will be absorbed by the floor and less energy will return to the foot. The result – more force will be required to take each step. Alternatively, the harder the floor, the greater the return of energy to the foot, resulting in more discomfort to the body. Finding the optimal balance between the energy the floor should absorb and the amount that should comfortably be returned to the body is essential.

Ecore’s flooring products uses a patented technology called itsTRU to fuse a performance wear layer to a 5mm Ecore recycled rubber backing. It has been tested and shown to significantly reduce fall impact as well as provide excellent foot-fall reduction and energy return compared to other traditional resilient floorcoverings. Additionally, Ecore’s line of itsTRU products are also able to reduce structure-borne sound, providing a much quieter space.

Conclusion

Ergonomic materials in the healthcare setting including how a floor – the foundation of the healthcare environment design – can contribute to nurse comfort and health is officially getting the attention it deserves from designers, architects, and specifiers. When healthcare staff have a better quality of life it impacts the quality of care they provide, which in turn can contribute meaningful improvements to patient care and overall satisfaction rates

Specifying a more comfortable, ergonomic flooring material can contribute to reduced chronic pain to improve productivity and patient quality of care, reduce absenteeism and workman comp claims, and lead to an overall improvement in quality of life for dedicated healthcare providers.

Mark Huxta is healthcare director of sales for Ecore, a company that transforms reclaimed wasted into performance flooring surfaces that perform well beyond industry standards.

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LANCASTER, Pa.—While there are many factors that contribute to increased stress for hospital occupants, noise is widely recognized as one of the top offenders. While hospitals can be filled with both routine and unexpected sounds, there are a variety of ways to help reduce or mitigate unwanted noise, starting with the built environment. A new whitepaper from Ecore—a manufacturer of safe, ergonomic and acoustic performance surfaces—takes a deep dive into evidence-based design and how acoustically engineered flooring in healthcare facilities can help absorb unwanted sound to create a more peaceful and healing healthcare environment.

Titled “Comparing Acoustic Flooring in Healthcare,” the whitepaper focuses on noise levels in healthcare environments and notes the effects noise pollution has on both patients and staff. Furthermore, it explores how flooring—an often-overlooked element—can have a substantial impact on the hospital environment and the overall health and wellness of patients and staff.

Helping architects and designers make informed decisions around design specification using quantified research and evidence-based design has been widely studied in hospital environments. The results shared in the report emphasize that by striking the perfect balance between force reduction and energy restitution, premium rubber flooring changes the characteristics of sound and can drastically improve acoustics in hospital settings.

Including a brief introduction to the issue of excess noise in hospitals, the whitepaper also explores and explains how the right flooring specification can enhance ergonomics and facilitate easy maintenance.

For more information about flooring specification in healthcare facilities, download Ecore’s whitepaper here.

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CANTON, N.C. — Situated in between the mountains on a river bank in North Carolina, Canton-based Silver Bluff Village stands as a family-owned and -operated senior living community offering short-term rehab, long-term care, independent living and social activities for residents.

Lisa Leatherwood, MSN, RN and administrator of Silver Bluff Village, pursued a renovation to the corridors and nurses’ station in the main skilled nursing building of the long-term care facility serving more than 120 patients. The challenges included replacing the flooring without creating a louder environment and specifying a surface that could be easily cleaned and maintained. While the main building was originally built in 1984, it originally featured luxury vinyl tiles (LVT), which created noise from patients, staff and families passing through the halls.

According to Leatherwood, acoustics is a prominent issue in senior living facilities. Patients being pushed on wheelchairs, linen carts, food carts and refuse barrels all create noise pollution throughout the building.

Trying to find solutions, the first renovation replaced the flooring with carpet, which reduced noise, but proved problematic for cleanliness. As a result, Leatherwood began searching for an alternative to carpet. She learned about Ecore flooring’s Rx line after attending a skilled nursing convention.

“We researched a less costly LVT brand engineered for sound control from a different manufacturer,” Leatherwood said in a statement. “However, when we followed up with that company, they couldn’t provide us with any resources or a customer referral to discuss noise levels. At that point, I just wasn’t convinced that LVT would be as effective as Ecore’s Rx line in sound absorption.”

Leatherwood then made the decision to install Ecore’s Forest Rx surface in European Oak in the hallways of all four resident wings, a business office area and in a short wing that leads to the assisted living building attached to the long-term care building. This type of flooring creates a surface that has the capability of reducing the risk of injury associated with falls while also offering sound control and comfort for walking.

The flooring was installed one wing at a time, starting with the facility’s most alert residents so they could immediately determine whether noise would be an issue. Once the project was completed, Silver Bluff residents and staff took notice of the positive results of the flooring installation, with no difference in noise between the carpet and Ecore flooring. According to Leatherwood, staff also observed that it was easier to roll their carts and move residents around, as well as clean the surface, stating the floor could be cleaned with a simple damp mop.

“We are extremely satisfied with the Ecore floors,” added Leatherwood. “They are beautiful, they really are as quiet as carpet, and everyone is enjoying them so much. We could not be happier.”

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LANCASTER, Pa. — Members of the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design (NIHD) recently gathered at the Lancaster headquarters of Ecore, a leading producer of flooring performance surfaces, to discuss how to improve nurse wellness within the healthcare built environment design.

The meeting highlighted the importance of recognizing how the physical and emotional health of nurses influences the quality of care delivered in healthcare facilities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), injuries among healthcare workers rank among the highest by industry. NIHD and Ecore believe that by improving seating, and providing better work tools and new technology to a more ergonomically-oriented healthcare environment, facilities can improve the performance and wellness of nurses.

Mark Huxta, director of healthcare sales at Ecore International, explained that the extended hours each shift and the demands to be bedside as much as possible make a nurse’s work day exhausting, stressful and physically challenging. The average age of modern-day nurses is 50-years-old and most walk over eight miles a day within 10-12-hour shifts. Ecore contends that using a flooring product that provides a balance between impact reduction for footfalls and energy restitution for ergonomic benefits can be less fatiguing while also reducing physical stress and strain to the lower extremities.

“Studies support that the physical and mental wellness of the caregiver can impact the quality of care delivered bedside which reflects on the patient experience,” said Huxta. “Lower back, leg and foot ailments are generally considered to be a leading cause for lost time, productivity and workman’s compensation claims among nurses.  Traditional resilient flooring products contribute to these conditions and with an aging nurse population working long shifts, the problem becomes further exacerbated.”

Patient surveys also indicate that too often the healing space can be noisy, which can negatively affect the patient experience and outcomes.  A noisy environment can also create communication issues and elevate stress for the staff, noting that products providing enhanced acoustic benefits are considered a critical part of the overall design strategy to create healthier healing environments.

Consequently, designers, architects and specifiers are paying more attention to ergonomic materials in the healthcare setting, including how a floor — the foundation of the healthcare environment design — can contribute to nurse comfort and health.

“Unfortunately, in healthcare, flooring is often specified last in the design process and ergonomic flooring with safety and acoustic features is far too often ‘value engineered out’ of the selection due to cost,” Kay Rademacher, president-elect of NIHD, said in a statement. “Ergonomic flooring should not be a last minute consideration. When healthcare staff have a better quality of life at work it impacts the quality of care they provide, which in turn can contribute meaningful improvements to patient care and overall satisfaction rates.”

According to Huxta, further studies are now underway, including a Pebble Project focused on how flooring may reduce the risk of injury from patient falls, a concern that has both personal and financial ramifications for the patient and provider.

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