ABSTRACT
A growing body of research shows that the healthcare built environment impacts safety outcomes such as infections, medication errors, falls, and staff injuries. Latent conditions that adversely impact patient safety are built into the physical environment during the planning, design, and construction phases. Design decisions should be proactively evaluated by engaging users from different disciplines such as infection control, nursing, risk managers, and environmental services. Emerging tools such as the safety risk assessment (SRA) toolkit provide a structured way to apply evidence-based design to improve patient safety.
