Patients’ Perspectives on the Design of Hospital Outpatient Areas

Abstract

There is a growing interest among healthcare managers and designers in moving towards a 'patient-centred' design of health and care facilities by integrating patient perceptions and expectations of the physical environment where care takes place. Increased interests in physical environments can mostly be attributed to our improved understanding of their role in patients' health outcomes and staff productivity. There is a gap in the literature on users' perspectives on physical settings in the context of healthcare. Moreover, the connection of care services with the design of the facility is often overlooked partly due to the lack of evidence. This research was aimed at filling the gap by exploring outpatients' perspectives on design factors related to the areas frequented by them, e.g., hospital waiting areas. A 16-item questionnaire was conducted among randomly selected outpatients in two hospitals in Qingdao, China, with a response rate of 84.3%. Five principal factors were identified: sensory; lighting and thermal; facilities; spatial; and seating design, which agreed with the literature. Non-parametric tests were applied to assess variances in constructed principal dimensions concerning demographic variables. Female outpatients were found to be more perceptive of the 'sensory design' factors than males. The number of previous visits to the hospital was found to be associated with 'spatial' and 'seating design' factors, while respondents' age had an association with 'sensory' and 'seating design' factors. Respondents ranked 'noise' and 'air freshness' and 'cleanliness' as highly important.

Comparison of Outpatient Satisfaction Measures Across Hospitals Built to a Thai Standard Design

“…Research has found other variables such as gender, age, visit frequency, wait time, can effect a respondent's feelings about environment satisfaction (Zhao & Mourshed, 2017;Tsai et al, 2007;Bleustein et al, 2014). However, the author contends that although these variables may influence the strength of any positive or negative feelings reported, they do not determine the actual absence or presence of a particular distress or destress factor.…”

The Role of Patients’ Psychological Comfort in Optimizing Indoor Healing Environments: A Case Study of the Indoor Environments of Recently Built Hospitals in Sulaimani City, Kurdistan, Iraq

“…Few studies have explored the range and order of factors that patients consider to be the most important to their psychological comfort (Zhao & Mourshed, 2017). This study aims to bridge this research gap through two objectives: to investigate the factors that increase patients' psychological comfort to provide evidence about how patients experience the physical environments of hospital wards and to investigate patients' and medical staff's opinions on the degree of importance and effectiveness of these factors in creating an optimal indoor healing environment in regard to patients' psychological comfort.…”

Human Factors in Green Building: Building Types and Users’ Needs

“…Yisong Zhao and Monjur Mourshed [11] conducted an interesting study about the hospital outpatient area using a survey of patients. This study is in response to the increasing interest in 'patient-centred' design of health and care facilities, especially the hospital waiting areas.…”