Do patients in hospitals benefit from single rooms? A literature review

Healing built-environment effects on health outcomes: environment–occupant–health framework

“…Researchers, in this case, are careful in terms of suggesting design implications. For example, the (dis)advantages of (de)centralized nursing unit layouts has to be discussed by staff and/or considered from the patients' point of view (Pati, Harvey, Redden, Summers, & Pati, 2015;Rashid, 2015); the optimal number of beds in a patient's room requires further studies (Chaudhury, Mahmood, & Valente, 2005;Van de Glind et al, 2007), while Yildirim and Yalcin (2016) discuss the benefits of single rooms. Studies indicated that using carpets, or other low-impact flooring solutions, did not show significant differences in reducing the risk of falls compared with a vinyl flooring (Hanger, 2017;Warren & Hanger, 2013); while Lachance et al's (2017) review concluded that compliant flooring was a promising strategy for preventing fall-related injuries.…”

“…the impact of sunlight on postoperative analgesic medication use (Walch et al, 2005). Another typical example is the debate of the benefits, or otherwise, gained from single-bed patient rooms (Van de Glind, de Roode, & Goossensen, 2007). It is challenging to integrate all HBE factors in a single-bed room (e.g.…”

Experiences of Being Hospitalized in a Single Bedroom versus a Four Bedroom: An Interview Study

“…Arguments for abolition of multi bedrooms are mainly based on the belief that patients prefer single bedrooms, but conclusions regarding the impact of single bedroom versus multi bedroom vary [2,3].…”

“…Since then, other studies have shown that there seems to be a connection between hospital interior design such as light, music, art on the walls etc and patients' perception of pain, anxiety and length of hospital stay [4][5][6]. Reviews about evidence based health care design conclude that single bedrooms decrease infection rate and promote healing and sleep quality [7][8][9] although conflicting results on infection rate reduction are found by others [3,10].…”

Antibiotic Policies

“…Simple infection control axioms such as "one bum per toilet" seem obvious if one aims to limit disease transmission, but are rarely implemented in practice-generally because of perceived increased costs. Yet, the advantages of such a hospital design would be the ready physical separation of infected from non-infected patients and potential savings (both human and financial) in preventing hospital-associated infections [9,10].…”