Psychological Impact of the Hospital Indoor Public Spaces on Patients' Health, Assessment, and Analysis

Abstract

Due to the rapid development of social economy, general hospital buildings of China are undergoing changes in their models, technology, and medical systems. Changes in the model of hospitals may affect the functional structure, streamline layout, and spatial form of the hospital building. The biological-psychological-social (biopsychosocial) model covers the overall significant factors in healthcare. The model focuses on the hospital public environment. For the advocacy of patient-centered medical concepts, researchers have put forward newer and higher requirements as well. However, there is scarcity of research that targets the psychological impact of general hospital public space environment construction on the patients’ health. Moreover, there is no unanimously recognized standard questionnaire for the public space environment. The purpose of this article is to investigate the needs of inpatients for the space environment, to understand the influencing factors of various space environments, and to explore the law of patient needs. The research intends to provide a theoretical background for the construction of a patient-centered space environment. A dedicated questionnaire was designed to systematically collect the significant features and factors. Using cluster sampling, a total of four medical and surgical wards were investigated. The data obtained from 430 questionnaires were statistically analyzed by SPSS-10.0. Various statistical operations such as descriptive analysis, independent sample t test, one-way analysis of variance, and linear and logistic regressions were performed over the data. The psychological impact was studied from four aspects. The highest score (3-4 points) obtained for the larger number of patients (84.4%) testifies that the public space environment has a significant impact on patients’ mental health. Besides healthcare, outcomes of the paper may be used in various related domains such as psychological well beings, spatial analysis, social interaction, and public space designing.