The role of spatial layout of hospital public spaces in informal patient-medical staff interface

This paper demonstrates how spatial configuration, of public spaces within hospitals, especially the integration core, influences relationships and interfaces between different categories of people. The paper particularly focuses on relationships between patients and medical staff, which was identified as a key element in order to achieve a better quality of relations, and therefore an effective enjoyment of Right to health. Social surveys and space syntax analyses (convaxial technique) were used to investigate the relationships between spatial layout and people interactions. The results here illustrated concern the building scale. We found some spatial-configurational elements which affect the patient-doctor informal interaction and can give us information about how and where these interactions can occur. Particularly the integration core of the ‘public’ and ‘staff’ models, the horizontal linkages between the cores and the functions of space. The meaningful contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how configurational structure of public spaces in hospital can affect and transform, in different way, the quality of relations between patients and medical staff and therefore the fulfilment of Right to health, since it can provide decision-making processes with a more comprehensive vision of the existing problems and possible prospects. Moreover the research highlights the importance of an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to the issues of health rights and hospital design.