Abstract
Objectives:The objective of the research was to study the visitors’ experiences of different healthcare environment designs of intensive care unit (ICU) patient rooms.Background:The healthcare environment may seem frightening and overwhelming in times when life-threatening conditions affect a family member or close friend and individuals visit the patient in an ICU. A two-bed patient room was refurbished to enhance the well-being of patients and their families according to the principles of evidence-based design (EBD). No prior research has used the Person-centred Climate Questionnaire—Family version (PCQ-F) or the semantic environment description (SMB) in the ICU setting.Methods:A sample of 99 visitors to critically ill patients admitted to a multidisciplinary ICU completed a questionnaire; 69 visited one of the two control rooms, while 30 visited the intervention room.Results:For the dimension of everydayness in the PCQ-F, a significantly better experience was expressed for the intervention room (p < .030); the dimension regarding the ward climate general was also perceived as higher in the intervention room (p < .004). The factors of pleasantness (p < .019), and complexity (p < 0.049), showed significant differences favoring the intervention room in the SMB, with borderline significance on the modern factor (p < .061).Conclusion:Designing and implementing an enriched healthcare environment in the ICU setting increases person-centered care in relation to the patients’ visitors. This could lead to better outcomes for the visitors, for example, decreasing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, but this needs further investigations.
Highlights
Visiting the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)The environment in intensive care unit (ICU) is dominated by sophisticated technology due to the seriousness of admitted patients’ conditions, which are often life-threatening
There were no significant differences between the characteristics of the visitors in the control rooms and the intervention room regarding sex, age, number of visits, and relationship to the patient; likewise, there was no difference in whether the patient had changed patient room during the stay at the ICU (Table 4)
The visitors who visited critically ill patients in the intervention room had a significantly more positive scoring in their perceptions of the psychosocial ward climate than those visiting in the control rooms did
Summary
Visiting the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)The environment in ICUs is dominated by sophisticated technology due to the seriousness of admitted patients’ conditions, which are often life-threatening. Experiences like anxiety, sadness, depression, and fatigue in family members of ICU patients have been reported repeatedly in prior studies (Apple, 2014; Celik et al, 2016; Day et al, 2013). These stressful experiences can sometimes develop into more persistent conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (Petrinec & Daly, 2016). Open visiting hours represent one way of implementing person-/familycentered care in the ICU (Coombs et al, 2017; Davidson et al, 2017)
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