Survey of Hospitals Lighting: Daylight and Staff Preferences

Abstract

Hospital staff's preferences for daylighting to notions of the effects of daylight on patient's recovery times and processes, their experiences of daylight when treating and diagnosing patients and patient comfort levels is studied. A questionnaire survey was developed as a tool to review subjective judgments of the staff lighting needs and satisfaction. Responses obtained from one hundred and thirty four staff showed that seventy nine percent of the participants identify daylight in patient's room as a factor helping them do their work more easily, and Seventy seven percent of the surveyed nurses and doctors claimed that daylight is an important element in patient rooms to aid in reviewing patient recovery through recognizing and interpreting changes in patient skin color. Seventy eight percent of hospital nurses and all the surveyed doctors believe that daylight has many health benefits including fast recovery and reduced length of stay for patients. Moreover, ninety two percent of the surveyed staff stated that patients preferred to stay in rooms with access to daylight as it makes them feel comfortable. These results should be taken on board by hospital designers and regulation makers as an indication of the importance of using good daylight in hospital wards to achieve two important goals of improving both hospital staff working conditions and the patient's healing environment.