THEMATIC REVIEW ON ISLAMIC DESIGN QUALITY IN HOSPITAL DESIGN IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

As a multi-racial country with Islam as the official religion, Islamic qualities should be considered in the design of hospitals to promote Islamic awareness, enhance self-esteem, strengthen commitment to Islam and ultimately gain Allah’s mercy and forgiveness. Implementation of these Islamic qualities in the designs of hospitals will enhance the healing process. Articles discussing design criteria for hospitals or Islamic quality were found, however, there are no reviews regarding the implementation of Islamic qualities in hospital design in Malaysia. The purpose of this research is to review the literature on implementation of Islamic qualities when designing hospitals in Malaysia. A list of keywords related to the issue has been identified to sieve through the total of 145 peer reviewed journal articles from Scopus, Web of Science and Mendeley databases. Eventually, by filtering using inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 27 articles were selected to be reviewed in this article. A thematic review of these 27 articles was performed using ATLAS.ti tools. This analysis has identified 29 initial codes related to hospital design and Islamic qualities which are then grouped into 6 clusters: environmental design, hospital environment, space planning and design, therapeutic design, Islamic values, and Islamic Concept Hospital. The results highlight the importance of future research which hopefully will influence the Malaysian administrators and designers to develop a better hospital environment with the implementation of Islamic qualities for the benefit of all Malaysians.