Navigation in Hospitals. Version 1.0.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating users’ experiences of navigation in complex hospital environments
IRAS ID
327222
Contact name
Victoria Goldenberg
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bournemouth University
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Hospitals are difficult to find your way around causing problems for patients, clinicians, and administrators. Finding your way around (or navigating) is more difficult for people of older age and anyone under stress, which describes a large proportion of people at any hospital. Poorly designed hospital wayfinding systems (in other words, maps, signs, and directories) can lead to stress, fatigue and delays; and puts more pressure on hospital staff who have to guide confused visitors. An intuitive wayfinding system (such that is easy to understand and to follow) would therefore benefit both the visitors and staff.
Good quality wayfinding systems are very difficult to produce because of lack of cooperation between people in relevant professions such as architects, builders, scientists, and estates managers. Also, our knowledge about how people navigate their surroundings has some limitations. Human navigation is typically studied using experiments in a lab or virtual reality, results of which may be difficult to relate to the real world.
We propose to conduct an ethnographic study, a method where our researcher will spend up to 24 months at two participating hospitals making observations and interviewing people. This method will allow us to study human navigation as it happens in its natural setting; and to find elements that make navigation easier or harder.
Potential participants in this study will be over 18 years old, speak English at a sufficient level, and able to give consent independently. In one part of the study, where we will use mobile eye-tracking, we will not be able to include people with visual impairments because this technology tracks the pupil of the eye to record what a person is looking at.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
23/NS/0053
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jul 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion