Can an ICU-patient roompromote wellbeing and improve healthcare quality? (original) (raw)
Concord, CA: The Center …, 2004
outcomes. The team found scientific studies that document the impact of a range of design characteristics, such as single-rooms versus multi-bed rooms, reduced noise, improved lighting, better ventilation, better ergonomic designs, supportive workplaces and improved layout that can help reduce errors, reduce stress, improve sleep, reduce pain and drugs, and improve other outcomes. The team discovered that, not only is there a very large body of evidence to guide hospital design, but a very strong one. A growing scientific literature is confirming that the conventional ways that hospitals are designed contributes to stress and danger, or more positively, that this level of risk and stress is unnecessary: improved physical settings can be an important tool in making hospitals safer, more healing, and better places to work.
HERD, 2018
To identify family members' and visitors' needs with relation to the design of a hospital room. There is a trend toward incorporating family zones in hospital patient rooms in order to improve patient satisfaction and encourage family caregivers to stay longer and overnight. A mixed-method study was employed. Interviews of patients and family caregivers were conducted to understand opportunities to improve hospital room designs based on recent experiences. Features intended to support short-term and overnight visitors were embedded in five full-scale simulated room design concepts. Small groups of family caregivers and patients toured two room design concepts and reacted real time to room features. A grounded theory approach was employed to identify emerging themes. A theoretical design framework is developed for the needs of family members and visitors for a range of time periods. This framework is founded upon desires to help make the patient feel more comfortable. There a...
The Environmental Services Perspective on Hospital Room Design: A Mixed-Methods Approach
Proceedings of the International Symposium of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare, 2017
Our aim is to enhance the safety and efficiency of all healthcare staff by designing patient rooms that meet the physical and cognitive needs of those providing direct and indirect patient care in hospital settings. A mixed-methods study was employed, where findings were compiled from twenty-six environmental services personnel across study activities. The insights were grouped into six categories of challenges with the design of hospital rooms in acute care settings: room cleaning, bathroom, room size, furniture, communication, and a miscellaneous 'other' category. There are design implications for storage, room design features, locations of room items, and fabrics and finishes.
Environmental Design in Acute Care Settings: A Case Study of a Neurological Rehabilitation Unit
HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 2013
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this case study was to examine environmental variables that lead to staff error in acute care settings: noise; lighting; ergonomics, furniture, and equipment; and patient room design and unit layout. BACKGROUND: Chaudhury, Mahmood, & Valente (2009) reviewed a number of design considerations related to reducing errors by nursing staff in acute care settings. The Neurological Rehabilitation Unit (NRU) at one hospital served to further examine the design recommendations outlined by Chaudhury et al. (2009). METHODS: Based on photographs, a site tour, interviews with the NRU manager and with the son of a patient of 5 months, comparisons were made between the NRU and the acute care setting design considerations reviewed by Chaudhury et al. (2009). RESULTS: The NRU appeared to comply with many recommendations: enforced noise reduction was facilitated through limiting both the number of patients per room and the number of patients admitted to the unit. Distinct roo...
Design indicators for better accommodation environments in hospitals: Inpatients’ perceptions
Intelligent Buildings International, 2012
Several studies have found an association between the physical environment and human health and wellbeing that resulted in the postulation of the idea of evidence-based and patient-centred design of healthcare facilities. The key challenge is that most of the underpinning research for the evidence base is context specific, the use of which in building design is complex, mainly because of the difficulties associated with the disaggregation of findings from the context. On the other hand, integrating patients' perspectives requires an understanding of the relative importance of design indicators, which the existing evidence base lacks to a large extent. This research was aimed at overcoming these limitations by investigating users' perception of the importance of key design indicators in enhancing their accommodation environments in hospitals. A 19-item structured questionnaire was used to gather inpatients' views on a 5-point scale, in two Chinese hospitals. A principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in five constructed dimensions with appropriate reliability and validity (Cronbach's alpha=0.888). The item, design for cleanliness, was ranked as most important, closely followed by environmental and safety design indicators. The item, entertainment facilities, was ranked lowest. The indicator, pleasant exterior view had the second lowest mean score, followed by the item, ability to customise the space. Age, accommodation type and previous experience of hospitalisation accounted for statistically significant differences in perceptions of importance of various constructed design dimensions.
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
Increasing interest in acuity-adaptable patient rooms, performing more services in patient rooms, and the increasing size of the population all have implications for the patient room as a workspace, including the number of people working in the room, types of tasks performed, and amount and layout of the space in which tasks are performed. This presentation describes an analysis of the opinions of professionals who typically control the design of hospital patient rooms, concerning five med/surg patient room designs developed through a participatory process involving mixed groups of hospital staff members, all of whom work in patient rooms. Ratings and comments provided by the design professionals identified clear preferences for one of the designs, as well as rooms and design elements for which there were more mixed or negative opinions. It is important for architects and designers to understand how room size, layout, and organization of features can be used to facilitate work for the full spectrum of hospital staff members who work in patient rooms. Such facilitation can reduce physical strain and improve efficiency and patient care.
Understanding the indoor environmental control and psychology (IECP) which affect inpatient health and wellbeing are crucial parameters for having positive experience on healthcare interiors. Recent research on IECP in healthcare building facilities underlines these issues with regard to users' needs, expectations and satisfactions. Thus, flourishing consciousness on IECP for interior design has a positive effect on the healthcare experience. In particular, inpatient rooms exclusively act on this experience since inpatients spend most of their recovery time there. Within the scope of this study, healthcare experience in inpatient rooms were examined in terms of IECP. A case study was chosen to measure and verify the concrete outcomes of the effect of hospital facilities on inpatients. Two methods were followed for this purpose; observation of inpatient rooms in terms of IECP and an inpatient questionnaire which was conducted among the volunteer inpatients. In the lights of these methods, following parameters were analyzed; stress, social interaction, privacy and territory, interior layout, lighting, daylighting, colors, textures, finishing, acoustical environment, aural comfort and noise control. As a result, problems related with the selected parameters in healthcare experience of inpatient rooms were revealed. This study aims to enlighten the current literature on the IECP for inpatient rooms.
The environment of inpatient healthcare delivery and its influence on the outcome of care
HERD, 2012
This paper addresses issues arising in the literature regarding the environmental design of inpatient healthcare settings and their impact on care. Environmental design in healthcare settings is an important feature of the holistic delivery of healthcare. The environmental influence of the delivery of care is manifested by such things as lighting, proximity to bedside, technology, family involvement, and space. The need to respond rapidly in places such as emergency and intensive care can override space needs for family support. In some settings with aging buildings, the available space is no longer appropriate to the needs-for example, the need for privacy in emergency departments. Many aspects of care have changed over the last three decades and the environment of care appears not to have been adapted to contemporary healthcare requirements nor involved consumers in ascertaining environmental requirements. The issues found in the literature are addressed under five themes: the des...
Contextual Study on the Physical Aspects of Healing Environment in Hospital Design
2018
In hospital buildings wherever most, patients look for medical treatment and employees provides continuous support, making a healing atmosphere is primarily necessary and relevant. Healing suggests redressing ills and establishing a method that leads towards health. The term ‘Healing Architecture’ that has been coined recently, is employed to invoke a way of a nonstop process; It has been known for a protracted time that the natural atmosphere is closely connected with health and its close environmental conditions have an effect on human health. However, there's little proof to counsel that the physical aspects of designed atmosphere will have an effect on human health. These physical aspects of healing atmosphere serve for all users of the care facility: employees, clinicians, directors, patients and families. Existing studies have shown that in a very newer hospital atmosphere higher health outcome will be achieved once the physical aspects like access to outside read, patient...