New State-of-the-Art Clinic Opens in Research Triangle Park

With the Help of a Nurse Turned Pioneer in Clinical Design

Duke Eye Center opened a 14,000 square foot clinic in May 2021 located in the new Duke Health Arringdon, a multispecialty clinical facility that includes an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) for a wide range of outpatient surgery. The new state-of-the art Duke Eye Center clinic offers cornea, glaucoma, and retina subspecialties, features 25 eye lanes, six rooms for injections and lasers, minor surgical procedures, as well as a large room for laser refractive surgery. The open-concept design includes workspace areas to encourage relationship and team building, as well as plenty of natural light and beautiful landscape views of Morrisville and Research Triangle Park. The Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center located on the fifth floor of the building will serve patients that require surgical procedures. Duke Eye Center Arringdon, like other satellite locations, aims to bring multiple specialties to patients in their own communities to meet the needs of the exponential growth of the region. This is the sixth satellite clinic for Duke Eye Center. Additional clinics are planned to span across the region in the coming months and years. Arringdon was designed with the help of Kim Denty, RN, MSN, a pioneer in clinical design and an expert in patient safety. She has assisted with the design of six clinics for Duke Eye Center, from upfitting new to remodeling existing space. With each project, she adheres to a common theme—commitment to a safe, functional, environmentally friendly, cost-effective clinic to enhance the patient experience and make delivery of care more efficient.

Caption for collage on page 18 “We have been so fortunate to have Kim’s expertise when designing our clinics. She is amazing and really does take the whole operation into consideration. Each clinic has Kim’s unparalleled touch and attention to detail. We could not be prouder of what she has done to make our clinics as efficient, safe, and economical as possible,” says Heidi Campbell, COT, director of operations for Duke Eye Center.

Denty began her career as a staff nurse and then held administrator roles in the Cancer Center at Duke Health. She has a passion for clinical design—even if she didn’t quite know it when she started as a staff nurse. At the time, the Cancer

Center was in Duke South, the original home of

Duke University Hospital. Denty remembers struggling with her daily work due to the clinic’s inefficient design. What she realized is that most building architects do not have clinical operations experience and do not fully understand why it is so important to pay attention to certain details. “When I worked in clinic, I was always taking things apart, moving walls, moving equipment to help patients and staff maneuver in the clinic,” she describes. The rooms were small and made it difficult to perform patient care—it became extremely challenging in a space that could barely accommodate patients, their families, physicians, residents, and nurses.