The Profession and the Discipline: Some Thoughts on Healthcare Design Teaching in the USA

Abstract

As healthcare design is gradually becoming a specialized area within architecture, many schools in the USA are proposing and implementing different curricular models. A comparison of these indicates non-agreement in the essential needs of these graduates. Additionally, the two professional credentialling agencies for healthcare designers also have dissimilar criteria. The questions thus are: what knowledge and skills do graduates interested in healthcare design need, what does the profession expect, and how can the academia be appropriate?

This paper collects data from public domains of each organization. It analyzes the criteria of the credentialling agencies through content analysis of their examinations and compares the curriculum of six healthcare certificates in leading US schools. Additionally, it presents the results of an online survey of eighty-six healthcare design professionals that was conducted to understand the profession’s view of what skills and knowledge healthcare architects need. From these, the paper identifies common areas and maps out discrepancies. Of special interest, this paper discusses the duality between the inclusive characteristic of design and the exclusive nature of research, and how they can be understood and addressed in healthcare design teaching. It breaks down the various aspects of design and research and maps them to find actionable intersections for the benefit of educating healthcare designers.