I SPENT the early years of my nursing career as a pediatric nurse working with children who were going through treatment of cancer. During this time, I witnessed great victories over disease. I also stood beside families in the midst of tremendous loss. The care that I and my nursing colleagues gave was not just for the patients. At times, it was also directed toward the parents and siblings. I went on to develop and manage pediatric programs at various facilities, and those early years helped ground me in the reality of shared experiences of people in the midst of care ... both those giving care and those receiving care.

In 2014, while leading the realignment and merger of 2 progressive care units, I was asked to change paths and become the "clinical lead" in a hospital expansion project and a new cancer center. The role was not completely defined, but the projects needed someone with a clinical background who could work with teams to create spaces that were integrated across functional areas. The lead needed to be a person who could be responsive to the changing needs in health care. This meant working with clinicians to break down long-held patterns and departmental silos that had created challenges to providing care and that simply would not work in new facilities. I had not thought about this type of assignment before, but there must have been something someone else saw in my nursing skills that they thought would fit the job.

During the design phase of the project, I focused teams on consideration of competing priorities, just as I had to do as a bedside nurse. I also emphasized the importance of the human experience. I asked questions that would drive architects and builders to think about how traditional departmental silos and the design of physical structures could both impact user experience while limiting opportunities for flexibility and greater collaboration in the future. For example, while working with the procedural teams, cardiovascular cathlab, and perioperative services, I learned that there was a desire to keep the departments completely separate. The teams wanted to design a distinct cathlab with a full pre/postprocedural recovery area and a distinct perioperative department for surgery with the same type of pre/postrecovery area. We were able to shift that thinking. We designed procedural departments that are collocated and structured in a way that allows the teams to not only function independently but also flex and support each other. Users in the space who need to collaborate on cases, such as cardiovascular surgeons and procedural cardiologists, are able to work closely together, which improves both the team experience and the care for the individual patient. I was hooked. Helping solve teamwork issues through appropriate space planning became my passion.

Today, my system is in the midst of building a 500 000-sq ft hospital and a 60 000-sq ft cancer center. I am able to use my nursing experience to ensure that we document the workflows and processes that will be most efficient for serving the community in these spaces. The built environment has been designed to allow teams the flexibility to adjust processes over time and to collaborate in ways that improve communication and positive outcomes for patients.

It is an honor to work in the health care design field, where clinicians have not traditionally held positions on design teams. One of the main challenges that I discovered early on was the need to overcome the language barrier between design terms and clinical terms. I have developed understanding of building design processes, and because I speak both languages, I act as a translator for different audiences and stakeholders. I know that my nursing expertise has helped improve the processes and building outcomes.

My current job is to support the design of renovations and new clinical facilities for a national system's large regional division. I have been able to take experiences from my early years of caring for patients and transform them into caring for how facilities and programs meet the needs of people. My work has focused on keeping the human experience in the center of design, including the care team, patients, and other users of the space. As a nurse, I was once privileged to serve individuals and families as a part of their healing care team. Now, as a nurse, I am privileged to serve many more, through helping ensure that they will get or give that care in efficient, comfortable, healing environments.