Oklahoma City interior designer earns prestigious health care certificate

Kara McDonald took a kind of vision test and passed with flying colors and lighting, fabrics, finish, furnishings and other elements of health care interior design.

Kara McDonald, an interior designer with Miles Associates: Architecture Planning and Interiors, recently earned the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers Certificate. McDonald is one of 120 recipients of the certificate nationwide, and the only one in Oklahoma. She is shown at Miles Associates, 865 Research Parkway, Suite 100.

Actually, it was the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers Examination. McDonald, 33, an interior designer with Oklahoma City's Miles Associates: Architecture Planning and Interiors, is the first and so far only person in Oklahoma to earn the AAHID Certificate.

The exam covers acute care, ambulatory and outpatient care, long-term care, senior living, as well as medical, retail and hospitality support services, codes, guidelines and other aspects of health care interior design. Five years of experience, a portfolio review and professional references are required for anyone to attempt the exam.

McDonald's recent experience includes work at The Children's Hospital at OU Medical Center, the OU Children's Physicians Building and atrium, Presbyterian Tower and Edmond Medical Center.

Adding health care to interior design adds layers of concerns not addressed in, say, a regular office setting, such as infection control, patient health and safety and the welfare of physicians, staff and visitors, McDonald said, physical and emotional.

Thinking about the time all those people spend in a given space, and how they use it and respond to it, drives her vision, she said.

When a lot of people think about architecture, they might not think about the experience of somebody in the space, how they see it. But you're at work or using that space more than you are at home, and so it needs to be fitting to what the environment is, McDonald said.

Take a laboratory, for example.

Somebody might think that that's more technical, just dry space. But it still can be uplifting and energetic to somebody that has to be standing on their feet for long hours while they're doing research, she said.

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Oklahoma City interior designer earns prestigious health care certificate