Comprehensive design considerations for a new hospital gown: a patient-oriented qualitative study

Abstract

Plain language summary: Patients have complained about hospital gowns for years, but little has been done to design a gown that makes people feel less exposed and more comfortable. New designs have been developed, but they have high costs and do not fit within current health care processes and procedures. Our interview-based study gathered the experiences and points of view of a wide range of people involved in the gown's life cycle, from creation to disposal. We interviewed 40 people from 3 main groups: patients and family members; health care workers; and others such as designers, buyers and launderers. All groups felt that gowns are not user friendly. This affects how patients and families feel about their health care experiences. Patients want a gown that is better designed to meet their needs. However, not everyone may benefit from redesigns. For example, different fabrics could result in higher shipping and laundry costs. Everyone involved in the gown's life cycle must work together to create a comfortable and useful gown that does not cost much more to make or look after.T he design of the standard hospital gown is not patient centred. Hospital gowns can convey a sense of exposure, discomfort, disempowerment, embarrassment, reduced self-esteem and compromised dignity. [1][2][3] As a result, governments, researchers, celebrity designers and private health care systems have made efforts to redesign the standard gown to improve patients' experiences. [4][5][6][7] However, design innovations have not been met with substantial market uptake; new designs are still being developed and tested. [8][9][10] Gown studies and redesigns have focused on the needs of patients and clinicians, 1,3,7 resulting in costly products 7 that limit use. 1 Little work has explored the perspectives of other gown stakeholders, such as manufacturers and launderers. 11

When patients wear backless gowns, they take on the “sick role” and become dependent’: Exploring the perspectives of healthcare professionals

“…The current study aimed to build on earlier work (Morton et al, 2020;Lucas & Dellasega, 2020;Syed et al, 2022;Topo and Iltanen-Tähkävuori, 2010;Edvardsson, 2009) by exploring healthcare workers' views on the hospital gown across a wide range of healthcare professions and with a larger sample of participants.…”

“…However, despite reports that it is uncomfortable, embarrassing to wear and compromises patients' dignity and mobility the hospital gown has remained relatively unchanged since its origins (Fitzgerald, 2017;Syed et al, 2022).…”