Evidenced-based and sustainable design in a high tech hospital environment : a challenge for the future

• The Intensive care unit (ICU) is the place of care for the most critically ill patients in hospitals. According to previous research the ICU environment can have a negative impact on the patients’ recovery process. Critical illness together with constant nursing activities, strong lightning and noise especially in patient’s room are believed to affect patients’ physiological parameters and wellbeing negatively. Research has addressed the role of the environment in relation to the development of the most common side-effect of care in ICU, namely ICU delirium. In addition, there is a limited access to single rooms in Swedish ICUs. This means that patients with various diagnoses, gender and age are treated together in the same room. Moreover, as many ICUs in Sweden are aged and in need of renewals, in order to meet the demand of contemporary intensive care, several restoration projects are planned in the following years. Aspects mentioned above have raised questions about how an intervention of the physical environment in an ICU could benefit the patients and their families. A literature search showed that there is little research about the impact of the physical environment on patients’ health in this context and that there is a lack of reliable long term studies focusing on the relationship between the physical environment, health and recovery. Therefore this project was initiated by two experienced researchers, Professor I, Bergbom at the University of Gothenburg and Associate professor B, Lindahl at the University College of Borås, with the purpose to investigate if an intervention in the physical environment in an ICU patient room can improve patients’ recovery process and wellbeing. The project has an exploratory and descriptive design. The intervention is located at an ICU, in Western Sweden and implicates a rebuilt patient room. The refurbished room (experimental room) is equipped with sound absorbents behind the walls and ceiling, a cycled lighting system and a new interior decoration. An identical room has remained intact (control room), which makes it possible to compare data from two different environments. All research questions will be related to the sound environment, the light environment and the esthetic layout. The results from this project will be useful in the context of ICU, but also in other high tech environments. The aim of this paper is to provide a description of the intervention project and present findings generated from a sound environment study.

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