Inside Duke Medicine

Comprehensive wayfinding plan eases patient, visitor access to medical campus

"We took a comprehensive approach. Instead of simply adding new signs to designate the new buildings, we saw an opportunity to provide clarity and convenience as patients and visitors navigate our campus.“ — Monte Brown, M.D., Duke University

Construction of the Cancer Center facility and Duke Medicine Pavilion (DMP) presents a timely opportunity to deploy a comprehensive, unified wayfinding system that uses improved signage, enhanced traffic lanes and increased drop-off space to fully integrate the existing medical campus with the new and possible future facilities.

“Finding one’s way on a large medical campus like ours can be intimidating,” said Monte Brown, M.D., Duke University Health System vice president for administration.

“Our goal was to design an intuitive system that could accommodate both high technology and non-technology users in a seamless manner to minimize stress.”

The concept is simple: Present the information the visitor needs to know, when they need to know it, in a manner that is easy to read, using words and pictograms that are easy to understand. That is not an easy task with over 200 acres and 8 million square feet spread out over almost 100 buildings of medical campus to navigate.

Combining computer traffic and pedestrian modeling along with input from staff and patients, an evaluation of the medical campus led to creation of a plan to improve the current inconsistent system for identifying campus destinations.

“We took a comprehensive approach,” Brown said. “Instead of simply adding new signs to designate the new buildings, we saw an opportunity to provide clarity and convenience as patients and visitors navigate our campus.”

The first step actually took place last year in officially designating the new road as Duke Medicine Circle with each building having an identifiable address. Duke Medicine Pavilion is 10 Duke Medicine Circle, the Cancer Center is 20, Morris Building entrance is 30, and the Clinic entrance is 40 Duke Medicine Circle.

The first visible step to visitors and staff in deploying the wayfinding plan occurred Dec. 5, with the opening of one lane on the reconfigured and newly renamed Duke Medicine Circle that will serve the Cancer Center, DMP and current clinic buildings. Eventually this will include up to five lanes in front of the DMP, including a bus only and a pass-through lane. All lanes will open along with the DMP in July 2013.

The signage and wayfinding system,which should be in place by late January, likely will be very familiar to most people. It combines a freeway style system of sequentially numbered or lettered exits and entrances along Erwin Road and Fulton Street with on-campus signage similar to that airports use to group services and aid travelers in quickly and easily finding their appropriate airline.

“Airports make it so simple,” said Jeff Langdon, MHA, administrative director of strategic operations. “You drive in, follow the signs to your terminal, then to your gate, and then plane. We wanted to employ that same concept. We are creating zones on the medical campus that are our ‘terminals.’ Our clinic destinations are our ‘gates,’ and our medical team is the ‘plane and flight crew.’”

There will be eight geographic zones – an alpha designation for areas lying along Fulton Street on a north-south axis and a numerical designation for areas running eastwest along Erwin Road. The exits and entrances along Erwin/Fulton will direct patients and visitors to those zones, where distinctive, unified signage located overhead and at street level will guide them to parking, clinical services and other key medical campus destinations.

The new wayfinding plan also aligns with DUHS’ long-term growth strategy by proactively assigning standby designations to areas identified as potential sites for future growth of the medical campus. As expansion occurs, those new areas can be officially designated and seamlessly incorporated into the plan and signage. And as growth occurs within the original eight zones, the new destinations easily can be added to signage.

The plan was developed by an inclusive committee of faculty and staff that solicited suggestions and considered a number of scenarios. Likewise, members of the Patient Advocacy Council – patient volunteers who meet with Duke leadership on a routine basis to provide patient perspectives on care and improving the overall patient experience – assessed the wayfinding concepts and offered valuable feedback.

“We are confident that the wayfinding plan will enhance the experience people expect when they come here for care,” Langdon said. “To make that happen, it is especially important that each of us devotes the time, energy and effort to take advantage of materials we will share to help educate ourselves about the plan and its terminology so we can efficiently and accurately assist our patients and visitors.”