As I write this blog post I am sitting in a hospital waiting room and I can’t help but notice how many doors there are in this building. From this room alone, I can see nine separate doors.
On the way to this department I passed through multiple doors as I struggled to locate the right area for my appointment. If you think of all the people that are making their way around a hospital you may think they’d be better off avoiding too many doors. I can only imagine porters walking around with trolleys and wheelchairs, elderly people and people on crutches having a tough time getting through all the doors. I find that the signs can be confusing or non-existent, which adds to the challenge. In addition to practical difficulties with all the doors, there is an issue with safety in terms of hygiene. Opening and closing doors may carry the risk of passing infections and there are hand cleaning stations dotted throughout the hospital. Most of the doors feature a metal strip along the bottom of the door which adds to the strength and stability. They also have a slow-close mechanism attached to the top to prevent the door slamming.
I did wonder why all the doors were closed, forcing patients to constantly open them, however each door features a circular label that explains this. Where a door has a circular sign with “FD30″ or “FD60″ on it, this means it is a fire door and these should be kept closed. There are special magnetic stays which are often used on hotel fire doors which are activated from a central system in the event of fire I wonder why these cannot be used in hospital!!! The different labels indicate the specification of the fire door in terms of how long that door can withstand a fire (30 or 60 minutes). At Kershaws Doors we have a large selection of fire doors and you can view the drop-down menu alongside each product to check size options and prices.
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