The Investigation of Physical Design,
Executives’ Attitude and Policy Towards
Service Efficiency Based on Universal
Design Principles; A Case Study of
Naresuan University Hospital
Charanya PHAHOLTHEP
1
, Thirawut BUNYASAKSERI
2
and PaweenaPHAHOLTHEP
3
1
Faculty of Architecture, Naresuan University, THAILAND
2
Faculty of Architecture, Naresuan University, THAILAND
3
Faculty of Medicine, Naresuan University, THAILAND
Abstract. Public hospitals should be designed to clover as wider inclusivity levels
as possible forproviding access for all. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons,
a quality service is not always provided. When evaluation of the service quality in
healthcare organizations is carried out, it is mostly conducted in terms of medical
service quality, whilst the physical layout, functionality and facilitating devices are
not given as much scrutiny. Post Occupation Evaluation (POE) is notably an
efficient process for checking the satisfaction of users after the building has been
in-used for a certain period of times. However, hospital is generally a type of
building and service that need to support users with a variety of physical
capabilities thus, a conventional POE may not cover all requirements of users, so
this research has employed the UD concepts as a basis to combined with POE for
evaluating service performance of a hospital of the case study, Naresuan
University hospital, THAILAND. Even though the POE delivered a good design
suggestion that is beneficial to users with a wide range of physical ability but that
may not guarantee the new design will be agreed by all stakeholders and
implemented through success. As a matter of fact, to success an implementing of a
good design does not depend solely on a designer, specifically for this case study,
a universal design to a hospital. This research found that to make UD perfectly
effects in a hospital (in Thailand context) may require more supportive factors
beyond just pointing out problems related to physical conditions of the design and
suggest a design solution. As in the context of Thailand, this research identified 4
factors contributing to the success of UD which the designer should be
accountable for (1) public understanding of the basic concepts of UD (2) all the
related background such as culture, tradition and economic etc. that contributed the
attitudes of all stakeholders (of the hospital) towards people with physical
impairments (3) the rights, laws, regulations and policies for people with
1
Corresponding Author, Faculty of Architecture, Naresuan University, THAILAND,
Email: yummer308@hotmail.com
2
Corresponding Author, Faculty of Architecture, Naresuan University, THAILAND,
Email: tbunyasakseri@yahoo.com
3
Corresponding Author, Faculty of Medicine, Naresuan University, THAILAND,
Email: yamroll_med@hotmail.com
Universal Design 2021: From Special to Mainstream Solutions
I. Verma (Ed.)
© 2021 The authors and IOS Press.
This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
doi:10.3233/SHTI210404
273