It’s become a routine, a good routine and each day I get more and more comfortable with it. Comfortable with what? TAYLOR’s morning and afternoon Wellness Stretch.
In our office, every morning around 10:40 and every afternoon around 3:40, we hear a friendly voice over the intercom, “okay everyone, it’s time for our daily stretch.” Then some silly song, usually from the 80s, comes on for about 30 seconds to motivate us into moving our lazy, chair-ridden butts into action.
At first, I felt a little awkward. I even tried to come up with excuses not to stretch. “Do I really have to do this?” “I feel silly.” “I really have to get this email done first.” “No one can see if I don’t do it.” It seemed trivial, but I did them anyway. So after week 2, I realized that this 30 second break really feels great and my shoulders don’t ache as much!
In case you’re wondering how to stretch, here is a great link from the Mayo Clinic:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stretching/WL00030
So let’s get off our butts and stretch – it’s okay we’re all doing it!!!
Written By: Dexter Preston
When I was interviewed at TAYLOR I was asked what wellness meant to me. They stumped me. I came up with happiness, virility, purpose, passion, and a bunch of other synonyms. I am starting to understand the best part of the TAYLOR family and I’d like to submit a better answer.
Wellness is acknowledging all that is possible. It is as intangible as memory, the moment, or a mission. Our imagination struggles to define it while we use our hands and our voices to express whatever we can grasp. We capture wellness on paper in the 2nd dimension of ink and paper. We model and construct wellness in the 3rd dimension of brick and mortar. We reflect and plan wellness into the 4th dimension of time and space. Finally we dream in the 5th dimension of possibilities.
This is where wellness lives for me. It is in how we push each other, how we listen to our clients, and how we never put limits on success.
If you want to take this line of thinking to the next level then wrap your brain around this!
Imagining the Tenth Dimension – Rob Bryanton
Written By: Adrian Juarez
How great it was to see people having fun without realizing that they were running in a 5K and getting healthier too! Each kilometer along the race route of The Color Run charity was designated with a different color and volunteers would throw the color at you as you sprinted by. It was such a weird experience to go into the cloud, which looked like a colorful explosion through the air as if a bomb had gone off, and see people enjoy the rain of color as it fell on them. There were kids running and playing in the paint, while many adults were having just as much fun rolling around in all the colors to make sure their shirts weren’t white anymore. It was pretty crazy and I had green and purple paint on me for a few days after the race!!!
I hope next time more people can join, not for the color, but for the experience of pretending we are kids for the 30 minutes that it lasted!!!
www.thecolorrun.com
Healthcare Facilities Symposium & Expo in Chicago
October 2, 2012 @ 2:15 pm
‘try on’ a form of leadership that can transform an organization – irrespective of your role.
it starts with ‘designing’ the social environmental, which can only be created by those individuals who are present….
a case study will be presented highlighting a personal and continuous journey, as well as evidence that has been gathered on the transformative outcomes that have occurred as a result.
hope to see you there!
Welcome to Movember, the month formerly known as November, which is dedicated to growing moustaches and raising awareness and funds for men’s health. My mates and I at TAYLOR have joined the movement and will be donating our upper lips to the cause for 30 days. Our moustaches (Mo’s) will spark conversations, and no doubt generate some laughs, sure; but all in the name of raising vital awareness and funds for cancers affecting men.
Why are we so passionate about men’s health?
* 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
* A man is diagnosed with prostate cancer every 2.2 minutes.
* 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.
* 24% of men are less likely to go the doctor compared to women. We kind of think we are too cool for doctors, and well, that’s a big part of the problem..
Please support our efforts by making a donation at http://mobro.co/TeamTAYLOR.
You can even write a check payable to Movember Foundation, reference Shawn Gosse’s (our team captain!) name and Registration Number 1652158 and send it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 2726, Venice, CA 90294-2726
If you would like to find out more about the type of work you will be helping to fund by supporting Movember, take a look at the Programs We Fund section on the Movember website: http://us.movember.com/about
Thank you in advance for supporting my efforts to change the face of men’s health.
Congratulations to Elise Drakes, one of TAYLOR’s project coordinators, for being selected as the recipient of the Chapman University’s 2011 Tomorrows Leaders Flex MBA Scholarship which is designed to tap into the up-and-coming business leaders of Orange County. According to Arthur Kraft, Ph.D., Dean of Chapman’s Argyros School of Business and Economics, Elise was selected “based on her strong commitment to enhancing the quality of healthcare design.”
Elise also brings people together to generate enthusiasm in others; particularly for her desire in helping non-profit organizations such as Share Our Selves (SOS), ACE Mentoring, Make A Wish Foundation and the Boys and Girls Club. Her passion for healthcare architecture and her dedication to helping others dovetail nicely with TAYLOR’s mission and principles of design and has enabled TAYLOR to extend its architectural practice much deeper into the heart of the community.
Elise is a multi-talented and self-motivated project coordinator working toward being a licensed architect. She has worked with the architectural teams for Hoag Hospital Irvine Renovation, and the Hoag Hospital Newport Beach Heart and Vascular Institute, and Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach. Elise is also a co-project manager for the renovation of the SOS (Share Our Selves) free clinic project.
Her talents and skills coupled with her caring personality make her shine. She is someone who will go far in her career and many others will benefit from her gifts and passion for life.
For additional information check out the articles on Elise by clicking the links below:
http://chapmannews.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/winner-of-60000-mba-scholarship-announced/
http://www.ocregister.com/news/drakes-304661-business-chapman.html
http://www.ocmetro.com/t-Chapman_Tomorrows_Leaders_Drakes06152011.aspx
I recently attended an awards banquet in December for the Miller Children’s Hospital Pediatric Inpatient Addition, where the project was awarded California Construction’s 2010 Best of Southern California Healthcare project. It was a proud moment sitting with the entire project team celebrating the project. In the midst of celebrating, I started to reflect on how the project actually carried a lot of personal meaning for me. Shortly after construction was underway for Miller, I found myself in another children’s hospital NICU with my first grandson. I witnessed firsthand how much children’s hospitals play a critical role in the lives of young children and their family members who need them.
Hospitals can be a scary place for anyone, even a grandfather, but more so for young children they can be terrifying. During the design and construction of Miller Children’s Hospital, Dr. Mel Marks, the project champion, continually expressed to everyone working on the project that this building is not just a hospital – this hospital is “all about the kids.” The entire team of architects, contractors, consultants and construction managers all took that statement to heart. For me it struck a chord, and I had truly a new appreciation for what we designed. Everyone went the extra mile to make sure that this hospital is “all about the kids” and to make sure that it is a special children’s hospital that we can all be proud to have been a part of. I know I am and I know my experience will always play a part in what I put into a healthcare projects.
Posting by: Michael McLane AIA - Principal
Photography by: Michael McLane Photography
When designing environments it is known that as designers and architects we must first listen and learn from those using the spaces we are creating; the care staff, patients, family members and visitors. Everyday patients and families members are entering healthcare facilities more and more knowledgeable of their care needs; while their understanding increases so do their expectations of facility design and what they will provide. As budgets become tighter and facilities become more pressured to validate spending the need to know if the design elements we are choosing to implement are making a difference. Elements of hospital design have been shown to be related to patients’ psychosocial and physiological functioning. The field of evidence-based hospital design seeks to “connect the dots” between environmental features and the physical and emotional well-being of patients, their families, and hospital staff, by subjecting the hospital built environment to scientific study and inquiry, and using this information to design measurably better hospitals. In a research study I have been working on with two clinical staff members from Miller Children’s Hospital, we seek to learn more about the impact of a shared adult-pediatric surgical suite – and subsequently a new exclusively pediatric surgical unit. This research study, which we are presenting at the 2010 Healthcare Design Conference in November, specially focuses on the partnership of Child life interventions and built environment and how the two can work together in creating an environment that assists patients and families through the pre-surgical process.
HEALTHCARE DESIGN 2010, November 16, 2010 @ 2:oopm
Alyssa Scholz, Associate AIA, Children’s Practice Leader, TAYLOR
Sandra Sherman-Bien, PhD Research Psychologist, Jonathan Jaques Children’s Cancer Center, Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach
Rita Goshert MA, CCLS Clinical Operations Manager, Child Life Department, Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach
When you think back to recent project accomplishments, what was the crucial factor in your success? If they key component was having a collaborative team made up of people possessing a variety of strengths, I would agree.
Several members of TAYLOR recently collaborated on the redesign of the bedroom of a 14-year-old boy named Timothy through the Make-a-Wish foundation. Timothy’s wish was to have a nicer and more relaxing room for a teenage boy to hang out with friends. Although our task was essentially to redecorate a room, when you think of it as granting a person’s wish from the Make-a-Wish foundation, that task becomes much more significant. Our project’s success can be attributed to the people who made it happen. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you remember back in the good old days, when we would sit around a campfire, roast marshmallows, share our feelings and talk about whatever was on our mind at the time? Of course this was before computers and the internet came along, right?
Today, we’d like to think that social media is the new campfire – a giant one, where not only family and friends share stories and information, but where knowledge sharing among peers can happen too. Here at TAYLOR we want to share with you.
We have expanded our blog to include Talk Wellness to create discussion, share current relevant news and showcase ideas. Our new blog will include a variety of topics from innovation, the latest healthcare trends and design, to the latest community activity, or whatever interests us at the moment. TAYLOR and our staff have great ideas and stories to share and we would love to hear your comments.
So browse around and enjoy our campfire called Talk Wellness!
