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Big Heart Intelligence in Healthy Workplaces Chapter j 13 251


             industry is increasingly aware of the importance of integrating hardware and
             software, BHI encourages an integration of form and flow in architecture and
             design with the goal of creating spaces that nourish vitality, joy, and happiness
             for everyone. Here are two examples of how BHI can be practically introduced
             at an early stage in the planning of such projects.

             EXAMPLE 1: BIG HEART INTELLIGENCE IN THE DESIGN OF
             HOSPITALS AND HEALTH CARE FACILITIES
             Most hospitals in the United States and other industrialized countries at least
             from a patient’s perspective are sterile, cold, and fearful places, where joy,
             kindness, and cheer appear only seldom, and when they do, they appear as
             transitory rays of sunshine. Most hospitals are businesses for profit measured by
             bed count turnover and other hard metrics. They are designed as venues to treat
             serious illnesses or injuries, not to accelerate healing and transformation. They
             mirror accurately the values, economics, and infrastructure of contemporary
             medicine.
                It is not surprising that burnout is rampant among physicians, nurses,
             caregivers, and supporting staff in most modern hospitals and health care
             facilities, and that burnout often manifests among caregivers in soaring rates of
             cardiovascular disease, suicide, and other most serious maladies (Ncbi). Burnout
             of caregivers necessarily translates into deteriorating quality of care of patients,
             especially the elderly and the poor, who are also most vulnerable to nosocomial
             infections. At the same time it is estimated that caregivers confer annually over
             $500 billion in services to the civil society, a significant amount of which is
             uncompensated. Without their contributions, it is fair to say that modern society
             would collapse (States).
                In recent years a global movement has developed to transform hospitals
             and health care facilities into healing and hope. One example is Health Care
             Without Harm ean international coalition of visionary green hospitals
             (Noharm). In such hospitals, BHI will find receptive and fertile soil.

             Explorers Wheel: Inspiration, Conception, Design
             At the earliest stage of a project the Explorers Wheel offers a systematic way
             to connect wide domains of knowledge and experience (Alliancesfor
             discovery-B). It can help architects and designers solve problems for clients
             in a new and powerful way that we call BHI-inspired “intertidal” thinking.
             Here is how practically an architect or designer might use the Explorers
             Wheel.
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