Thermal comfort in maternity wards: Summer vs. winter conditions

Abstract

Hospitals are complex facilities mainly designed based on hygiene and medical requirements, with thermal comfort as secondary concern. Thermal comfort in maternity wards has scarce in the scientific literature. Thus, this paper aims to fill this gap and focuses on a summer-winter comparative study based on the evaluation and analysis of the indoor thermal environment parameters and subjective responses of postpartum women. The methodology involved both quantitative and qualitative data acquisition. Descriptive and graphical methods alongside with cross-tabular method and correlations were used to analyse the data collected. We recorded high indoor air temperatures especially in summer and low relative humidity levels in winter. Relative humidity shows statistically significant differences for thermal sensation and comfort votes (p = 0.025, respectively p = 0.002). Thermal sensation votes are high correlated with thermal comfort and preference votes with statistically significant differences (p < 0.001), which means that any change of the thermal sensation votes reflects in the immediate change of the thermal comfort and preference votes. We found statistically significant differences (p < 0.001) between the predicted mean vote and the thermal sensation vote, in both seasons. To reduce this difference, we propose a different metabolic rate to be considered in thermal comfort standards, for this special category of patients, healthy individuals admitted in hospital to fulfil a physiologic process. Statistical analysis also indicated that age has an influence on thermal sensation, comfort and preference votes, reason why it should be further considered and investigated in this type of evaluation.