In addition to standard sliding doors, customizations can also support flexible design within a health care facility. For instance, patient ability can vary greatly. One patient may be able to access a toilet room on their own while another may need staff assistance or assistive devices. When specified within a patient room, sliding door assemblies that can accommodate bed lifts—the mechanisms assistive, immobile, or partially mobile patients use to move through a room—remove barriers to accessibility for all patients, and allow greater flexibility in patient accommodation. When a patient room can meet the needs of many types of patients, it reduces pressure on medical staff to find appropriately designed rooms, which can lead to a quicker response time if there is a surge in inpatient care needs.
Codes to know
While it may be tempting to specify sliding doors throughout a building, it is important for architects and designers to know the relevant codes for their project—whether it is a health care facility or not. Like international codes and codes for other nations, Canada’s National Building Code (NBC) is a model building code. Every provincial or territory government reviews the code (and new editions) to decide how to adopt or modify it to best fit their jurisdictions. For this reason, design professionals are encouraged to speak with a local authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) to clarify any uncertainties about what codes should be followed for a particular project.
According to the NBC, doors that open into a corridor that provides access to paths of egress are required to either swing on a vertical access or be designed to swing when pressure is applied. The latter are often called break-out doors. Doors that can only slide do not meet these requirements and, therefore, cannot be used in applications connected to exit corridors—other than storage suites in warehouse buildings that are no more than 28 m2 (301.3 sf).
Although this limits some places where sliding doors can be used, it does not preclude their use entirely. Further, there are other door types that meet exit path requirements without completely sacrificing the benefits of sliding doors, such as swing doors with unequal leaves.
Using unequal swing doors to ensure corridor access
In areas that prohibit the use of slide-only doors, architects still have door options that meet code and contribute to flexible design. Although some sliding doors offer break-out features, architects can also look to swing doors with unequal leaves to ensure openings wide enough to accommodate the movement of larger equipment and patient beds without having to dedicate space for an above-average swing arc clearance during everyday use.
Unequal swing doors often have a leaf that satisfies, or exceeds, minimum opening requirements to allow everyday operation without excessively large swing arcs and approach clearances. In this way, they operate like a normal swing door—allowing the same degree of accessibility that another swing door option may have. However, when medical staff need to increase the opening width, they can engage the smaller secondary leaf. This leaf can increase the opening size by up to 914 mm (36 in.). With both leaves open, health care providers can more easily adapt a space to changing patient needs and the latest technological advancements in medicine.
