Whānau Rooms | Co-Design Workshops
Auckland DHB’s whānau rooms are a designated space to welcome and support the whānau of our patients. Unfortunately, most of these rooms are currently varying states of disrepair and need to be brought back up to the standard required to adequately support whānau whilst at Auckland DHB.
The Whānau Room Rejuvenation Project offered us the opportunity to bring together patients, whānau and staff alongside an architecture team to explore the purpose of these rooms, their current use, and their potential future state through 8 co-design workshops.
These co-design workshops gave us the chance to engage with users in a process that values the participants’ experiences of these spaces as expert knowledge, as well as acknowledging the importance of whānau within the patient experience.
The co-design workshops consisted of:
3 whānau workshops (4-6 participants)
3 staff workshops (6 - 12 participants)
2 combined workshops (7 participants)
In depth interviews were also conducted with Charge Nurses and whānau to target the voices not being heard; due to constraints of the workshops such as time commitments and hospital location.
From this engagement the following themes emerged:
The need for refuge & respite from the clinical world
Seeing the whole person, recognising and supporting whānau needs
The importance of whānau support for patients
Confusion from whānau around what's allowed in the whānau room
Conflicting views around staff responsibility for the whānau rooms
Cultural competency, enabling the wairua (essence) of the space to flourish
“It gives us strength, each and every one. Especially if it happens to be the husband or wife… If they have that whānau there, it won’t seem as devastating, so that support is really important.”
- Whānau member
These Co-design workshops have been an important part of the design process, enabling us to establish a strong foundation from which to prioritise the patient, whānau and staff voice.