Meet the designer who solves problems in St James’s Hospital

You are a designer based in a hospital. What is your role?
People around the hospital have great ideas about new ways to do things, and my role is to help look at those ideas and support them to become a reality. Since last November I have been working as a designer in residence with the department of medical physics and bioengineering, who have established a space for innovation. Staff in St James's come to us with their ideas, and we try and help progress them.

How do people in the hospital let you know about their ideas for doing things better?
Every year we have St James's Design Week, where all hospital staff can submit their ideas through a survey. From that we get a shortlist of ideas to design, that engineering teams – including students from the National College of Art and Design, Trinity College Dublin – work on for a week in March.

One of those ideas gets brought forward, and seed funding is provided through the HSE Spark Innovation Programme. A lot of the projects I am working on now came through that process.

Can you give us some examples?
One is a modified design of the protective gown that we are familiar with from the peaks of the pandemic. The design is looking to make the gowns easier to remove, so they are easier for healthcare staff and relatives of patients to use.

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Another project focuses on signage for patients around the hospital, and another is looking to improve a visual board used in the ICU to help patients communicate their needs when they can’t talk. The vision is that we could develop designs that can be implemented in St James’s and beyond, to have a positive impact on patient care and staff experience.

How did you get into this line of work?
I am from Tyrone originally and I went to NCAD to study product design. I did my master's there in medical device design and then I went to Galway to work in a medical device start-up. When this opportunity to move to St James's came up, it was a way for me to learn more about working with patients and healthcare staff.

What is the advantage of being on site in the hospital?
The benefit of being a designer within healthcare is that you can get access to the end users of whatever you are designing. You are working in the same building or campus as the people who are experiencing the problem in their day-to-day job, and it is easy to walk over and talk to them about it or see things in action. That's a really rewarding part of the process, to be helping people to solve real-life problems.

What would your advice be to researchers about communicating with end users?
You will always learn from talking to people who will use or be affected by what you are doing. You need to communicate with end users throughout the journey, and be open to changing direction with your design if that is the best thing to do.

And how do you take a break from it all?
My resolution for 2022 is to get into painting and more creative activities again. I really enjoy running, too, and I cycle to work as much as possible. I spend a lot of my work time indoors, so getting outdoors is a must.