Research highlights • The aim of the short paper is to set the problem and define the possible drivers for future research in exploring the relationship between healthcare built environment and staff retention • Today the physical environment, the architecture, of healthcare facilities is considered having various effects on patients and staff • Especially in the western world healthcare staff shrinking and ageing will have a significant impact • Hospital organizations are defining strategies for staff retention improvement • Usually, this issue concerns management of risk, leadership and motivational aspects but the built environment might as well play a role in this process • In the recent COVID-19 pandemic these issues have been raised considering staff burn out and stress • Future research will need to deepen the relationship between staff retention and physical space of healthcare settings starting from the proposed framework

1) objective/aim: This paper establishes typologies and spatial criteria by analyzing floorplans of radiotherapy departments in German hospitals. 2) background: The configuration of room clus-ters is a useful tool in early stages of planning radiotherapy departments. Currently there is a lack of planning requirements. With the implementation of evidence-based typologies, workflow and patient-stay can be positively influenced. 3) methods: For developing typologies and planning re-quirements a comparative floorplan-analysis from 20 radiotherapy departments in Germany was conducted. Given the complexity of radiotherapy departments, a list of rooms was com-posed, and cluster-formations were defined in correlation with the workflow of radiotherapy treatment. The rooms of the analyzed floorplans were categorized by the cluster-formations to identify their relation and arrangement towards one another. The analysis was inspecting dif-ferences and similarities in patterns of spatial relationship. 4 )results: With this comparative floorplan-analysis, a classification of radiotherapy departments on the basis of organizational and spatial characteristics was developed. Five clusters were defined: Reception, Outpatient, Im-aging, Planning and Therapy with each dedicated rooms. Typologies and spatial characteristics were derived and visualized. 5) conclusion: The comparative analysis of floorplans shows a spectrum of built environment and cluster arrangements, which lead to typologies and planning requirements. Further research will be conducted by combining these typologies with workflow, individual travel paths, environment-behavior and requirements of all user groups and expert knowledge. With this multilayered research, design recommendations for planning radiotherapy departments can be identified.

The Covid-19 pandemic revealed the crisis of the care sector for a global ageing population. Most of the countries across Europe were strongly impacted by the pandemics and one of the most vulnerable groups was the senior population, especially those who lived in care-homes. Since 2000, healthy ageing and the person-centred care model have become relevant concepts in the health sector. The application of the person-centred care model to the built environment requires the adaptation of building regulations and urban planning for providing a home-like environment. The current study was placed in Belgium for being a country where small-scale care facilities were widely implemented. The aim of this study was to analyse different domains of elderly care-homes in Belgium through a survey to question their relationship with the impact of the first wave of Covid-19. The results of the ten care-homes that responded to the survey showed a high implantation of the person-centred care model. Regarding Covid-19 infections, 5 out of 10 of the care homes had infected residents and only 2 of them had residents that passed away due to the infection. These two care homes were in the top three of the care homes with more residents. Moreover, several environmental and management aspects such as small-scaled units, individual bedrooms, outdoor access, and fixed staff for each unit were measures already implemented in the care homes and later recommended by authorities during the pandemic. Further research might investigate whether these aspects could influence the resilience of the care homes if compared with the number of infections in other care homes where those measures were still unimplemented.

The paper reports and reflects on an evaluation project at Malmö Nya Sjukhus, NSM, Sweden, where the relationship between healthcare performance objectives and indi-cators in the built environment have been studied. The starting point of the study was the outcomes in performance set by the hospital and a retrospective analysis of how these could be related to evaluation of the design of the new hospital. The paper discusses evaluation against a backdrop of existing studies on evaluations and with an argument that that there is a need for tools and methods to strengthen design work in general. The main argument is that it is valuable to evaluate the work processes in healthcare against spatial configurations in addition to studying effects of specific design features. Con-necting healthcare process indicators to spatial design also envision several challenges and possibilities that are addressed in the paper. The study presented is mainly quali-tative with and explorative approach.