Health Care Center

Synonyms / Other Terms Used

Health Facility, Health Services, Medical Care

Category

Safety, Health Care, Public Services, Public Facilities

Message / Function

For notice in general and to indicate the location of a facility where health care is offered

	Source	Description
73	Hablamos Juntos	Front view of two human figures, one with stethoscope around the neck, the other with dress/coat and traditional nurse uniform cap
63	Hablamos Juntos	Front view of human figure with dress/coat and traditional nurse uniform cap and sitting person on the right
70	Hablamos Juntos	Front view of upper half of two human figures, one with traditional nurse uniform cap, the other with stethoscope around the neck, horizontal bar below
	ISO 7001	Human figure in half figure viewed from the front, with stethoscope around the neck, cross in the upper right corner
	ISO 7010	Human figure in half figure viewed from the front, with stethoscope around the neck, cross in the upper right corner
60	Hablamos Juntos	Human figure in half figure viewed from the front, with stethoscope around the neck, cross in the upper left corner
	Braunstein & McLaren	View of building with cross on wall, upper part of human figure with mask and headdress
	ERCO	Human figure in half figure viewed from the front, cross in upper right corner
	NYCHHC	Frontal view of head with headband and round element (forehead mirror)
	González	Head with typical nurse accessories, hand in front and finger over mouth area
40	Hablamos Juntos	Circular arrangement of pillbox with ℞ medical prescription symbol, microscope, and cross, all connected by arcs
	NYCHHC	View of building with cross on wall to indicate medical care
	Dutchicon	Stethoscope
	SEGD	White cross on dark background

Note: Some of the examples shown above were mirrored horizontally to contrast differences.

Discussion

The examples shown above are a selection from the range of pictograms and symbols for the referent Health Care Center and the related term Doctor that can be found in publications and guiding systems worldwide. There are several general concepts and a multitude of visualizations. It seems there is no real single stereotype to indicate the location of a facility where health care is offered. It also has to be questioned how far referents like Outpatient Center etc. can clearly be differentiated from the intended message and how many such terms should be visualized.

Compared to the referents Hospital and First Aid there are only few test results available:

Hablamos Juntos in partnership with SEGD (the Society for Environmental Graphic Design) developed several test designs to signify Health Services, services to improve general physical and mental well being, of which five pictograms were subjected to a test on basis of the Comprehensibility Estimation procedure (Fontaine et al., 2010). With median scores ranging from 73 down to 40 none of the pictograms examined was judged as well comprehensible. The numbers next to the pictograms in the table above are the median estimation scores reported for the corresponding pictograms in this study. Regarding these results it was decided to use a simple white cross on dark background as symbol for the intended message.

In a follow up project this symbol was examined - among others - by Zender & Cassedy (2014) using the ISO/ANSI Open-ended Comprehension Test to find out if this variant is understood just as well in a different culture, and if not, why it does not work. Test results from the United States and Tanzania reveal that the white cross on dark background, labeled SEGD in the table above, basically might work to a certain extent in the USA, as 75 % of the responses from the American sample could be classified as correct. But in the Tanzanian sample it became evident that this variant does not work in some regions: it neither performed well among respondents with advanced medical literacy, nor among typical local patients. Wrong answers mainly were related to the domain Church/Cross.

In our database we did not find comprehensibility data concerning other image contents shown, as for example the ISO 7001 pictogram with a human figure with stethoscope around the neck and a cross in the upper right corner.

Recommendations

As no information is available on comprehensibility of some of the concepts shown, we suggest conducting a Comprehension Test for several pictogram variants, and also including image contents like the one proposed in ISO 7001 for Public Information Symbol PI PF 044: Health Care Center or Doctor. Detailed information about the most frequent responses given in each of the response categories should be provided to correctly judge comprehensibility and improve designs.

Tests of pictograms of referent Health Care Center

Fontaine, L., Fernández, O., & Middleton, D. (2010): Universal Symbols in Health Care - Symbol Design Research Report. SEGD.

Zender, M., & Cassedy, A.E. (2014): (Mis)understanding: Icon Comprehension in Different Cultural Contexts. Visible Language, 48, 69.