Abstract:
Hospital buildings are architecturally complex in design, construction and investment; especially medical school hospitals that, in addition to being a place for medical treatment, are also used for teaching medical personnel, nurses and performing research. According to standards set by The Medical Council of Thailand, 2012, medical school hospitals must contain no less than 400 hospital beds and have at least 14 different types of medical services. The outpatient departments of medical school hospitals are different from that of general hospitals because they require space for teaching as well. The objective of this study is to analyze the physical characteristics of the outpatient departments of medical school hospitals established between 1984 - 2020 and to study the factors that determined those characteristics. A combination of documents, principles and theories related to hospital design were used to analyze the architectural construction drawings of the outpatient departments of the medical school hospitals in this case study. Relevant people were also interviewed to analyze the resulting data and evaluate the results. The study researches the physical characteristics of the outpatient departments of the 5 medical school hospitals and determines if the outpatient planning is consistent with the Master Plan. For hospital A there was no clear master plan. Hospital C was completely lacking a master plan. However, Hospital B, D, and E all have planning consistent with their Master Plans. Each of the hospital's outpatient department is divided into 8 subsections. The proportion of the usable area is different for each hospital. However, the waiting area including walkways occupy the most space followed by examination rooms, diagnostic rooms, support area, back service rooms, nursing rooms, nursing offices and special equipment rooms respectively. There are 2 types of waiting area layouts, namely, the centralized plan, which is utilized in Hospital C. The advantage of this layout is that the utilization of the examination room can be adjusted appropriately. The second type is the decentralized plan which is used in the layout of hospitals A, B, D, and E. The advantage of this layout is that it reduces the risk of spreading the disease. The size and proportion of waiting area per examination room of all hospitals averaged over 9 square meters per examination room in accordance with the standard. Every hospital has both a single examination room as well as a combined examination room. The size of examination rooms in every hospital have an average area of more than 9 square meters. The factors most affecting the physical characteristics of the outpatient department are the design standards, hospital policies, suggestions by the design company, hospital budget, construction site size, building style and the unique departmental usage. The usage patterns within the departments of medical school hospitals are unique, namely, there are examination rooms with teaching rooms that differ from general hospitals. Each department has a specialist doctor according to the medical field, therefore, the designer must design an examination room that is sufficient for the number of people who come to use it as well as the equipment used within the examination room. As technology modernizes each department uses an increasing amount of medical equipment when compared to the past.