Nursing staff's experiences of working in an evidence-based designed ICU patient room-An interview study

• Introduction: It has been known for centuries that environment in healthcare has an impact, but despite this, environment has been overshadowed by technological and medical progress, especially in intensive care. Evidence-based design is a concept concerning integrating knowledge from various research disciplines and its application to healing environments. Objective: The aim was to explore the experiences of nursing staff of working in an evidence-based designed ICU patient room. Method: Interviews were carried out with eight critical care nurses and five assistant nurses and then subjected to qualitative content analysis. Findings: The experience of working in an evidence-based designed intensive care unit patient room was that the room stimulates alertness and promotes wellbeing in the nursing staff, fostering their caring activities but also that the interior design of the medical and technical equipment challenges nursing actions. Conclusions: The room explored in this study had been rebuilt in order to create and evaluate a healing environment. This study showed that the new environment had a great impact on the caring staffs' wellbeing and their caring behaviour. At a time when turnover in nurses is high and sick leave is increasing, these findings show the importance of interior design ofintensive care units. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Hälso- och sjukvårdsorganisation, hälsopolitik och hälsoekonomi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Hospital design and construction

Intensive care units

Interior design and furnishings

Nursing staff

intensive-care-unit

environmental-factors

nurses

place

noise

satisfaction

technology

stress

health

impact

Hospital design and construction

Människan i vården

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)