The Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design (NIHD) has selected Jeri Brittin, Ph.D., director of research at HDR, as the 2017 winner of its Lady with the Lamp Research Grant. The grant will support a study titled, “Evaluation of New Nebraska Community Hospital Facilities: Nurse Perspectives and Patient Outcomes in Centralized vs. Decentralized Nursing Units.”

A tribute to Florence Nightingale, whose “Health of Houses” represented an early and groundbreaking ecological model of health, NIHD’s Lady with the Lamp Research Grant honors Nightingale’s work on the impact of the built environment on patient outcomes. Specifically, the grant funds research that addresses Nightingale’s Environmental Theory, a holistic look at the impact of environmental factors such as noise, light and fresh air on patients’ ability to heal.

Brittin and her team at HDR in taking an ecological approach engaging an explanatory and convergent mixed-methods research design, exploring the built and organizational environment factors influencing both patient and staff outcomes at two community hospitals: Fremont Health in Fremont, Neb., and Great Plains Health in North Platte, Neb.