In an online study, virtual hospital rooms designed according to the principles of evidence-based design or the principles of Feng Shui were associated with greater potential benefit for viewers than virtual representations of standard hospital rooms. Emma Zijlstra of Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 5. Hospital designers might consider employing specific design principles in an effort to improve patients' experiences.
Growing evidence suggests there are beneficial outcomes from an approach known as evidence-based design. For instance, exposure to more daylight in hospitals is associated with lower stress and pain. Other well-known design approaches include Feng Shui, a Chinese system based on hypothetical energy flow, and the use of proportions following the golden ratio.
Despite these well-known options, experimental evidence on their relative benefits in hospitals is lacking. To help clarify, Zijlstra and colleagues randomly assigned each of 558 study participants to view online representations and information about a virtual hospital room designed with one of four approaches: Feng Shui, the golden ratio, evidence-based design or, as a control, a standard design from a real-life hospital. Only people who had previously been hospitalized at some point in their lives were invited to participate.
After experiencing the virtual rooms, participants completed a questionnaire .
