Hospital outdoor spaces: Therapeutic benefits and design considerations

Abstract

The awareness of positive influences of outdoor environment on patients' healing process has long been present in hospital architecture. Despite the fact that economic factors had the greatest impact on hospital design during the past century, which caused a neglect of possible restorative benefits of hospital surroundings, recently developed and integrated healthcare systems are more focused on patients' needs regarding the effects of treatments and services on their satisfaction. With the aim to reduce costs of medical therapies without sacrificing their quality, this new approach resulted in a substantial shift in planning and designing of both indoor and outdoor hospital spaces. This paper presents an analysis of various aspects that need to be taken into account while planning of hospital outdoor spaces. It proposes a list of design considerations that may contribute to achieving a healing environment with positive effects on patients' well-being and outcomes of their medical treatments, while simultaneously raising the overall hospital's efficiency. Having in mind specific organizational structure and functional flows that an institution of this type comprises, these considerations are determined, preconditioned and set up to meet strictly defined norms, regulations and criteria. The purpose of this research is to examine which elements and features and to what extent may assist in generating a supportive, inviting, secure and non-threatening atmosphere of the outdoor hospital surroundings that discharges negative reminiscences, experiences or assumptions on how unpleasant the stay in a hospital may be

Hospital Outdoor Landscape Design

“…A supportive and distractive environment is also essential for people visiting friends or relatives in the health-care facility, because while visiting patients can be salutary, it may also be emotionally draining [30].…”

Treatment of pedestrian communication accessibility in the process of urban design: Case study of Institute for orthopedic surgery "Banjica"

“…In order to respect the mentioned laws, strategies, goals and recommendations, it is necessary that all hospital outdoor spaces must be designed to be physically secure and accessible to people of all ages and abilities, thus contributing to their positive psychological perception [9]. It is necessary to arrange space which may assist in generating a supportive, inviting, secure and non-threatening atmosphere of the outdoor hospital surroundings that discharges negative reminiscences, experiences or assumptions on how unpleasant the stay in a hospital may be [9]. Accessible hospital environment is necessary to three users group: patients, employees and visitors.…”

“…Employees, varying from the medical to administrative and supporting staff, are a critical group of users since they spend every working day within the hospital environment. Visitors as the third user group are also in need of positive distractions while spending time with their family members or friends [9].…”

The Relationship between Sustainable Built Environment, Art Therapy and Therapeutic Design in Promoting Health and Well-Being

“…In terms of the chronological trend, the applied research of TD in the field of environment, architecture, and space occurred between 2010 and 2014. In terms of research method, the application research of TD in the fields of environment, architecture, and space mainly adopts literature review [23,63,64] and case study [65][66][67]. In terms of the research subject, the TD mainly focuses on the design of the nursing environment for patients with dementia to improve their quality of life [64,68,69], followed by the elderly [54,70,71] and children [57,58,72].…”