
Dr Rebecca McLaughlan
ARC DECRA
School of Architecture and Built Environment
- Email:rebecca.mclaughlan@newcastle.edu.au
- Phone:(02) 405 53016
Designing hospitals that support patient health
An expert in architectural design and theory, Dr Rebecca McLaughlan’s research shows a fascinating link between the built environment, our experiences of healthcare and a patient’s physical and emotional wellbeing.
We might not always notice its effects, but the built environment can alter our mood and behaviour in subtle but significant ways.
A confined, busy room can heighten an already stressful situation. An echoey open space can intrude on our privacy. Dr Rebecca McLaughlan explains that in healthcare settings such as hospitals, the built environment can have a surprisingly powerful influence on the experiences of a patient, their family and medical team.
“Architects have long understood that the quality of the built environment can have a profound effect on people and their wellbeing. If people feel uncomfortable in an environment, the ramifications of that discomfort may be severe, even if this is difficult to measure.
“For example, imagine having to sit for days in a hospital room you really dislike. Would this make you feel agitated? Would you feel encouraged to sit past visiting hours or would you be in a hurry to get out of there?
“Or imagine trying to process complex information in the middle of a hospital’s circulation space. Would you feel like you could take the time to ask all of the questions that you had?”
As an experienced architect and esteemed researcher, Rebecca is particularly interested in how the built environment impacts people during times of intense vulnerability. This includes mental health, palliative and paediatric patients and their support networks.
“My work seeks to understand how the built environment can better support people through these difficult life experiences.”
Keeping children engaged in care
According to Rebecca, researchers are just beginning to uncover the many ways in which the built environment can impact patient wellbeing.
For example, over the last decade or so, architects have been encouraged to create ‘positive distractions’ within healthcare environments—such as gardens, artworks or aquariums—to distract patients from the stresses associated with their illness.
While the value of a distraction was originally understood by the length of time it could hold a patient’s attention, Rebecca’s recent research has uncovered evidence for engaging people—especially children—in new ways.
“In a study recently conducted at the Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital— undertaken by a team at the University of Melbourne (where I was previously working) in partnership with Lyons Architects – we found that the value of distraction was different for kids.
“By putting features into a hospital that kids wouldn’t expect to find there—such as movie theatres, aquariums and animal enclosures—it didn’t just distract them, it reframed for them the very idea of a hospital.”
Creating interesting spaces within hospitals can have a strategic impact on children’s long-term health by keeping them engaged in care.
“These interesting spaces made kids more willing, even excited, to return for their follow-up appointments.
“Discovering that architectural strategies can shift perceptions so significantly that kids actually want to visit a hospital is meaningful since absenteeism from follow-up appointments can exacerbate the severity and cost of medical treatment.”
Insights from researchers such as Rebecca and her collaborators are contributing to a growing evidence base that can inform the architectural designs of the future. As a result, hospitals are paying increasingly close attention to their built environment as an important factor for patient health and outcomes.
“Our research will provide evidence for those who design and commission hospitals regarding the importance of including unique features when setting construction budgets for new healthcare facilities.”
Architecture with empathy
In 2019, Rebecca brought her valuable research expertise to the University of Newcastle. The Newcastle region, she explains, provides a perfect position from which to connect with hospitals and key health providers along Australia’s east coast.
The University also offered Rebecca a tight-knit research community that could support her most recent research focus: examining the environments in which palliative care is delivered.
“Dying or losing a loved one is one of the most difficult challenges we must face. Yet contemporary architectural responses seldom acknowledge this.
“Palliative care is often delivered within hospital wards of the same, standard design used throughout the hospital. This architecture does nothing to alleviate the stresses of these life experiences and can actually exacerbate it.”
Supported by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellowship from the Australian Research Council, Rebecca’s research project aims to discover how palliative care spaces can be redesigned to better suit the physical and emotional needs of patients and their families. Rebecca says the project is also motivated by personal experience.
“I’ve observed life-altering diagnoses delivered in busy hospital corridors where anyone could overhear them. I’ve found myself having to communicate devastating news over the phone to friends and family members while standing in a corridor wedged between a laundry room and a kitchenette. Architecture can offer so much more than this.
“My DECRA project will find out what patients, their families and medical teams need from their built environment and how the complexities of project procurement (budgets, policy, procedures around project briefing, etc) must be navigated to enable better environments for palliative care to be built.”
Overcoming roadblocks to success
Alongside hospital procurement complexities, one of the biggest challenges in Rebecca’s research is the ability to accurately measure the emotional impact of the built environment.
“We can measure things like the distance a nurse must walk during a day, or how the relationship of one space to another can impact communication between medical teams. But the question of how our built environment makes us feel is much more complex.
“To date, no one has developed a measurement tool sophisticated enough to quantify this with any certainty.
“Subjectivity also makes measurement more complicated. People bring different life experiences, preferences and associations when responding to the built environment. Is one set of design guidelines even capable of responding to people from different cultures, for example?”
Fortunately, Rebecca and her collaborators are committed to uncovering solutions, asking the tough questions and championing the often-misunderstood role of architecture in healthcare.
“Architecture impacts the delivery of medical care in subtle but significant ways and few researchers are asking these types of difficult questions, even though we know they can impact people on a very personal level.
“There will be no easy solutions, but my DECRA project hopes to unravel these complexities a little further, to bring the field closer to a fuller understanding of how design can be used to benefit patients and families.”
Designing hospitals that support patient health
An expert in architectural design and theory, Dr Rebecca McLaughlan’s research shows a fascinating link between the built environment, our experiences of healthcare and a patient’s physical and emotional wellbeing.
Career Summary
Biography
Rebecca McLaughlan is a Lecturer in Architectural History/ Theory and Design. Her research takes place at the intersections of architecture, medicine, pedagogy and practice. Driving her work is an interest in how architecture can express empathy with its inhabitants and be sufficiently captivating to reframe expectations; healthcare environments provide a useful vehicle for investigating these questions. Beyond the immediate experience of these buildings, McLaughlan’s research aims to understand the complexities that influence how healthcare projects take shape including: changing models of patient care, evolving technology, procurement models, stakeholder expectations, networks of influence, and the political environment in which these buildings are constructed.
McLaughlan was the recent recipient of a three-year DECRA research fellowship from the Australian Research Council to investigate the spaces in which palliative care is delivered. This project will extend her existing body of work that has investigated the architectural responses created for mental healthcare, oncology and paediatric healthcare. By extension, her research is also interested in how we educate architects for a profession required to address problems of ever-increasing complexity.
McLaughlan is a New Zealand registered architect and maintains strong links to practice through ongoing collaborations with Melbourne’s NTC Architects and Parallel Practice. She recently guest edited an edition of Architect Victoria (with Parallel Practice) and is a current committee member of the Newcastle Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington
- Bachelor of Architecture, University of Auckland - NZ
- Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, University of Melbourne
Keywords
- Architectural design, history & theory
- Architectural pedagogy
- Empathetic design
- Ethics of architectural and research practice
- Healthcare environments
- Palliative care
- Transdisciplinary practice
Fields of Research
Code | Description | Percentage |
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330104 | Architectural history, theory and criticism | 30 |
330306 | Design practice and methods | 20 |
330102 | Architectural design | 50 |
Professional Experience
UON Appointment
Title | Organisation / Department |
---|---|
Lecturer | University of Newcastle School of Architecture and Built Environment Australia |
Lecturer | University of Newcastle School of Architecture and Built Environment Australia |
Academic appointment
Dates | Title | Organisation / Department |
---|---|---|
4/5/2015 - 31/12/2017 | Research Fellow : Design for Wellbeing ARC-linkage project with Lyons Architects | University of Melbourne Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning Australia |
1/1/2018 - 1/2/2019 | Lecturer in Architectural Design | University of Melbourne Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning Australia |
Awards
Award
Year | Award |
---|---|
2018 |
Best Research Paper, European Healthcare Design Conference 2018 European Healthcare Design Awards |
2012 |
Postgraduate Research Excellence Award Victoria University of Wellington |
2001 |
Most Worthwhile Contribution to Studio Work & Student Affairs The University of Auckland |
Recognition
Year | Award |
---|---|
2007 |
Awards Jury, invited member, New Zealand Institute of Architects, Canterbury / Westland Regional Awards New Zealand Institute of Architects |
Scholarship
Year | Award |
---|---|
2011 |
Kathleen Stewart Postgraduate Scholarship Victoria University of Wellington |
2011 |
Doctoral Scholarship Victoria University of Wellington |
Publications
For publications that are currently unpublished or in-press, details are shown in italics.
Journal article (21 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | |||||
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2021 |
McLaughlan R, Pert A, Lodge JM, 'Productive Uncertainty: The Pedagogical Benefits of Co-Creating Research in the Design Studio', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ART & DESIGN EDUCATION, 40 184-200 (2021)
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2020 |
McLaughlan R, Pert A, 'Briefing a children's hospice: bridging the evidence gap and redefining value in contemporary healthcare design', ARQ-ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY, 24 265-276 (2020) [C1]
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2020 |
McLaughlan R, Chatterjee I, 'What Works in the Architecture Studio? Five Strategies for Optimising Student Learning', International Journal of Art and Design Education, 39 550-564 (2020) [C1]
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2019 |
McLaughlan R, 'Virtual reality as a research method: Is this the future of photo-elicitation?', Visual Studies, 34 252-265 (2019) [C1]
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2017 |
McLaughlan RJ, 'In Defence of Theodore Gray: Architecture as a Vehicle for Re-evaluating a Doctor's Commitment to Patient Care', HEALTH AND HISTORY, 19 20-43 (2017)
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2017 |
McLaughlan R, 'Learning from evidence-based medicine: exclusions and opportunities within health care environments research', Design for Health, 1 210-228 (2017)
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2017 |
McLaughlan R, 'Re-contextualising Criticisms of Colonial Asylum Building in the Mid to Late Nineteenth Century: The Case of Lawson's Seacliff Asylum', FABRICATIONS-THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND, 27 22-46 (2017)
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2015 |
McLaughlan R, 'Corrupting the Asylum: The Diminishing Role of the Architect in the Design of Curative Environments for Mental Illness in New Zealand', ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW, 20 180-201 (2015)
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Mclaughlan R, Lyon C, Jaskolska D, 'Architecture as change-agent? Looking for innovation in contemporary forensic psychiatric hospital design', Medical Humanities,
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Show 18 more journal articles |
Review (1 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | ||
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2019 |
McLaughlan R, 'Book review: Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture, and the Body (2019)
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Conference (9 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
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2020 | McLaughlan R, Lyon C, Jaskolska D, 'Interrogating the desktop precedent study : A predominant but little discussed research method in contemporary healthcare facilities design', Interrogating the desktop precedent study : a predominant but little discussed research method in contemporary healthcare facilities design, Royal College of Physicians, London (2020) | ||
2019 | McLaughlan R, Garduno Freeman C, ' You can t say that at SAHANZ : Critical nearness and the role of autoethnography in architectural history', Distance Looks Back. Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of Sydney (2019) [E1] | ||
2018 | McLaughlan R, Liddicoat S, 'Agency in the paediatric hospital: Architectural strategies to support independence and empowerment', European Healthcare Design Conference Proceedings, Royal College of Physicians, London (2018) | ||
2016 | Cauldwell C, McLaughlan R, 'Discursive Decay: Informalised Architectural History', Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand: 33, Gold, Melbourne (2016) | ||
Show 6 more conferences |
Other (4 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
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2017 | McLaughlan R, 'Post Occupancy Evaluation and Methodological Straightjackets', ( issue.Parallel Practices pp.16-17). Melbourne: AIA, Victoria Chapter (2017) | ||
2017 | McLaughlan R, Pert A, 'Review of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre', ( issue.2 pp.24-32) (2017) | ||
2016 | McLaughlan R, 'The Past Awaits: An Open Letter to the Rebuilders of Christchurch', ( pp.32-35): New Zealand Institute of Architects (2016) | ||
Show 1 more other |
Grants and Funding
Summary
Number of grants | 5 |
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Total funding | $521,459 |
Click on a grant title below to expand the full details for that specific grant.
20191 grants / $436,159
Designing for early engagement and wellbeing in palliative care$436,159
Funding body: ARC (Australian Research Council)
Funding body | ARC (Australian Research Council) |
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Project Team | Doctor Rebecca McLaughlan, Doctor Rebecca McLaughlan |
Scheme | Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2019 |
Funding Finish | 2021 |
GNo | G1900192 |
Type Of Funding | Aust Competitive - Commonwealth |
Category | 1CS |
UON | Y |
20172 grants / $40,400
The Transdicisplinary Design Studio: Piloting a Framework for Epistemic Fluency$20,600
Funding body: The University of Melbourne
Funding body | The University of Melbourne |
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Project Team | Dr Rebecca McLaughlan, Associate Professor Jason Lodge, Professor Jennifer Philip, Mr Stefano Scalzo, Dr Mark Boughey, Professor Julie Bernhardt, Professor Alan Pert, Professor Tamara Kohn, Dr Rachel Marsden |
Scheme | Learning and Teaching Initiatives Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2017 |
Funding Finish | 2018 |
GNo | |
Type Of Funding | Not Known |
Category | UNKN |
UON | N |
Resourcing Sessional Teachers to Deliver Exceptional Architectural Studio Teaching$19,800
This project captured the teaching practices of eight high-performing architectural studio leaders the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. This data is currently being used to create a professional development programme for sessional teaching staff and will be published within academic journals to contribute applied knowledge regarding best teaching practice to the field of architectural pedagogy.
Funding body: The University of Melbourne
Funding body | The University of Melbourne |
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Project Team | Dr Rebecca McLaughlan, Professor Alan Pert, Professor Don Bates, Associate Professor Chi Baik |
Scheme | Learning and Teaching Initiatives Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2017 |
Funding Finish | 2018 |
GNo | |
Type Of Funding | Not Known |
Category | UNKN |
UON | N |
20161 grants / $24,900
Overcoming the Current Limitations of Evidence Based Design Research Using Virtual Reality$24,900
Funding body: The University of Melbourne
Funding body | The University of Melbourne |
---|---|
Project Team | Rebecca McLaughlan |
Scheme | Early Career Researcher Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2016 |
Funding Finish | 2018 |
GNo | |
Type Of Funding | Not Known |
Category | UNKN |
UON | N |
20151 grants / $20,000
Australian Youth Humanities Forum$20,000
Funding body: The University of Melbourne
Funding body | The University of Melbourne |
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Project Team | Dr Bridget Vincent, Dr Rebecca McLaughlan |
Scheme | Equity Innovation Grant |
Role | Investigator |
Funding Start | 2015 |
Funding Finish | 2016 |
GNo | |
Type Of Funding | Not Known |
Category | UNKN |
UON | N |
Dr Rebecca McLaughlan
Position
ARC DECRA
School of Architecture and Built Environment
College of Engineering, Science and Environment
Contact Details
rebecca.mclaughlan@newcastle.edu.au | |
Phone | (02) 405 53016 |
Fax | (02) 492 16913 |
Office
Room | AG15 |
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Building | Architecture |
Location | Callaghan University Drive Callaghan, NSW 2308 Australia |