In this series, Branding: The Silent Partner, we’ve been examining ways in which well-designed architectural signage can function as a brand promoter. To illustrate different perspectives by which this can happen, we’ve used a hospital as our example. Hospital signage can promote the facility’s brand to all people who interact with the hospital, but this varies according to the perspective of the people in question. We’ve studied how branding through signage works in a hospital for its patients, visitors and guests. Part III will explore how hospital signage can promote the facility’s brand to health care professionals, specifically doctors and nurses.

Effective Wayfinding

One of the best ways a hospital can promote its brand to health care professionals is through effective wayfinding signage, both exterior and interior. Since the goal of doctors and nurses is to provide quality, compassionate care to patients, some of whom are in emergency situations, these health care professionals don’t want to waste one moment in finding where they need to be. Hospital signage that effectively communicates wayfinding to health care professionals will brand the facility in their minds as being efficient and designed to promote the very best in quality care and healing. The wayfinding aspect of branding is especially important from the perspectives of doctors and nurses who are new to a hospital. It’s hard to imagine a more frustrating situation for a health care professional than experiencing difficulty in finding his or her way to the location in a large hospital where a patient awaits much-needed medical care.

Team Spirit

When a hospital leverages well-designed signage as a brand promoter, it can increase health care professionals’ confidence in the hospital as a whole. Signage, when effectively implemented to convey important information among health care professionals, helps promote a sense of team spirit between doctors and nurses, as well as among doctors and among nurses. By utilizing attractive, high-quality signage, both exterior and interior, a hospital can promote its brand as a place where the providers of medical care feel not like cogs in a bureaucracy but like a team coming together on behalf of patients who need care. With branding through quality signage, doctors and nurses who work for a hospital receive the message that the facility prioritizes what’s most important: caring for the sick and helping them get better. Branding elevates professionals’ confidence in a health care facility, as well as their pride in working there.

The most important part of doctors’ and nurses’ jobs is caring for patients. Through well-designed, helpful signage, a hospital can effectively promote its brand as a facility in which patients will receive the best care. That perception is vital not only from the perspectives of patients, visitors and guests, but also from the perspectives of doctors and nurses. Patients place their confidence in doctors and nurses as well as the particular facility, and doctors and nurses need to feel good about the hospital in which they work. Branding through signage can heighten confidence all the way around, through helpful wayfinding and useful information, which contribute to the sense of everyone being on the same team. Medical professionals who feel good about the facility in which they work are those who will continue to work in that hospital, doing their best for the people who need their skills and their help.