Balancing Emotions in Healthcare Spaces with Travis Tyson of Cleveland Clinic

Feb 8

Travis Tyson is Director of Planning at Cleveland Clinic, an academic nonprofit medical center consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the world.

In this episode of Let's Talk Limbic Sparks, Travis reveals how to design healthcare spaces to balance emotions and accelerate healing. We talk about ways to gather insights from patients and caregivers that inform architectural projects. He describes examples of spaces that he helps create across the 39 million square feet of Cleveland Clinic's properties, which are designed to balance emotions.

Travis shares how important it is to gather insights for design plans from a variety of perspectives, so that you can accommodate the various needs that people have as everyone is going through something individual. We talk ideas such as calming staff lounges and daylighting, to quick wins like artwork, noise reduction and paint colors. Travis emphasizes the value of investing in healthcare built environments in ways that help caregivers to calm their emotions during a stressful day, and that help patients heal faster.

Key Takeaways and Soundbites:

“Every project we do impacts someone or something, and it's kind of good to know that you're doing good.”

“We're creating more spaces, what we call Lavender Lounges, for caregivers to go and really decompress a little bit when they go through those tough situations, because everybody's human, right, and it's a takes a big toll on our staff.”

“Our office a patient experience also helps manage patient panels... the best part about the interaction with those groups is it's an ongoing conversation. We will bring those specific patients in to help develop our projects.”

“There might be a higher upfront cost to implement some key things, but in the long run patients are healing faster, they're getting out of the hospital, caregivers are happier, and it just makes everything better.”

“Quick wins...Look at color, look at artwork, things that easy to take care of... artwork does wonders to make a space pop and give you different feelings... We walk in different spaces and you see blank walls, but you add a piece of art to it, it makes the space pop, it makes you think, it makes your emotions recharge and spark, which is good.”

"Make sure everything has a meaning within your space. I think that goes a long way to balancing emotions."

“Every day I'm learning something different about people, so every day is a learning environment.”

“There are so many different types of people going through so many different types of things and they're all specific to those individuals. You have to take the collective and figure out how to design it into your spaces... The challenge is, what's the right thing to do for everybody... thinking about different scenarios upfront.”

Here are some fun facts about Travis…

Travis Tyson, AIA, ACHA, NCARB, MARCH, is Director of Planning for Cleveland Clinic Enterprise. He has been with Cleveland Clinic for over 17 years. He has his Master of Architecture degree, is a licensed architect and is a board-certified healthcare architect with the American College of Healthcare Architects.

He has over 25+ years of experience in architectural planning and design. Travis works collaboratively with Cleveland Clinic Leadership overseeing programming, planning and design throughout the entire Cleveland Clinic Health System. He serves on the Healthcare Design Advisory Board and is on the Facilities Guidelines Institute (FGI) Revisions Committee.

He has participated in over 1,000 healthcare projects, from small renovations to major strategic new builds and strategic healthcare system acquisitions.

His current role is to lead the Planning & Design Department for the Cleveland Clinic Enterprise. His team is responsible for more than 39 million square feet of space within the Cleveland Clinic Health system, which covers Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Toronto, London, Abu Dhabi and other various locations worldwide.