Both wayfinding signage and hospital whiteboards play their part in providing the best patient experience possible. When patients and their loved ones walk the halls of a hospital, the wayfinding plays a large role in providing a pleasant and relaxing experience. When they are in a patient’s room, it’s the communication boards that increase their engagement in and their satisfaction with their care.

The Similarities Between Hospital Whiteboards and Wayfinding

The more you study the purpose and design of both wayfinding and patient boards, the more you begin to see the similarities between how patients interact with them. Both of these facility design elements have the same benefits both for hospitals and the patients they treat. Hospital wayfinding helps reduce anxiety; the same can be said of hospital whiteboards. Hospital wayfinding improves the patient experience and helps increase HCAHPS scores; patient room boards are also proven to help raise HCAHPS scores.

On the other side of the equation, poor quality healthcare whiteboards create a variety of additional costs for facilities, and the costs of poor wayfinding are no different.

Combining the Two to Create Something Greater

There is a significant power in coordinating the branding, look and feel of both your wayfinding signage and your whiteboards. Effective wayfinding reflects a company’s brand, which not only includes the logo and color scheme present on wayfinding signage, but also the story that the signage tells. When done correctly, it creates a seamless experience for patients and visitors to get to where they need to be.

Hospital whiteboards that are similarly designed allow this smooth and engaging experience to extend beyond the pathway a person follows and into the end destination, which is often the patient room. This design uniformity between wayfinding signage and patient room boards can increase in brand appeal of the facility and the efficiency of  employees while creating a consistent experience that is more calming to patients.

Design Ideas for a Consistency

The facilities that are leading the way in wayfinding design use colors and themes to differentiate buildings, floors and other areas of the hospital. Seattle Children’s hospital uses animal themes to separate the areas of their facility. It makes their wayfinding fun, easy to follow and calming for their target patient: children. Facilities that use this type of scheme can keep it consistent by transferring similar images, themes, colors, etc. to the boards in their patient rooms. Seattle’s ocean zone, for example, features vibrant images of whale and other aquatic animals and plants, a theme can be easily be used on their custom whiteboards.

Facilities don’t have to go as far as having a complete theme. Simple color coordination can go a long way in making wayfinding a better experience for patients, an experience that can also be extended into patient rooms via colored whiteboards that coordinate with the area of the hospital a patient is staying. 

Branding and Consistency Matter

When the branding, color schemes, themes and overall design of a facility is vibrant, uniform and geared towards making a patient’s stay more calming and comfortable, both patients and hospitals feel the benefits. It all begins with a clear idea that can be transferred to a custom whiteboard design. Have an idea for a design scheme for your hospital? Get in touch with VividBoard to discover how it can be transferred to the whiteboards you use.