For inpatients who spend a longer time in the hospital, the built environment plays a significant role in their experience. While many hospital boards aim to create a patient-centered hospital, few have a specific idea about what this means in terms of spatial qualities. This creates a major challenge for those involved in designing hospital environments. Therefore, we aimed to identify which elements play a role in inpatients’ spatial experience, and how these elements relate and interact. Patients were followed during transport and afterward interviewed. In this way, we gained insight into their spatial experience, static, and in motion. This experience turns out to be shaped by material, social, and time-related aspects. An analysis of the interactions between these aspects yields a nuanced understanding of how inpatients’ experience of the hospital environment is shaped by the spatial and social organization, movement, and perspective. This understanding should allow informing hospital boards, architects, and staff to start designing hospital buildings in a more patient-centered way.
AnnemansM.Van AudenhoveC.VermolenH.HeylighenA. (2012). Hospital reality from a lying perspective: Exploring a sensory research approach. In LangdonP.ClarksonJ.RobinsonP.LazarJ.HeylighenA. (Eds.), Designing inclusive systems designing inclusion for real-world applications (pp. 3-12). London, England: Springer.
3.
AnnemansM.Van AudenhoveC.VermolenH.HeylighenA. (2014). Being transported into the unknown: How patients experience the route to the operation room. In LangdonP.LazarJ.HeylighenA.DongH. (Eds.), Inclusive designing: Joining usability, accessibility, and inclusion (pp. 131-141). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
BollnowO. F. (2011). Human space. London, England: Hyphen Press.
6.
BromleyE. (2012). Building patient-centeredness: Hospital design as an interpretive act. Social Science & Medicine, 75, 1057-1066. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.04.037
7.
DevlinA. S.ArneillA. B. (2003). Health care environments and patient outcomes: A review of the literature. Environment and Behavior, 35, 665-694. doi:10.1177/0013916503255102
8.
EdensorT. (2011). Commuter: Mobility, rhythm and commuting. In CresswellT.MerriamP. (Eds.), Geographies of mobilities: Practices, spaces, subjects (pp. 189-204). Farnham, England: Ashgate.
9.
GibsonJ. (1968). The senses considered as perceptual system. London, England: Allen & Unwin.
10.
HallE. T. (1982). The hidden dimension: An anthropologist examines humans’ use of space in public and private. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
11.
HindmarshJ.PilnickA. (2002). The tacit order of teamwork: Collaboration and embodied conduct in anesthesia. Sociological Quarterly, 43, 139-164.
12.
IngoldT. (2000). The perception of the environment : Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London, England: Routledge.
13.
LatourB.YanevaA. (2008). Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move: An ANT’s view of architecture. In GeiserR. (Ed.), Explorations in architecture: Teaching, design, research (pp. 80-89). Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser.
14.
LaurierE. (2011). Driving: Pre-cognition and driving. In CresswellT.MerrimanP. (Eds.), Geographies of mobilities: Practices, spaces, subjects (pp. 69-82). Farnham, England: Ashgate.
15.
LawsonB. R. (2004). Schemata, gambits and precedent: Some factors in design expertise. Design Studies, 25, 443-457.
16.
LefebvreH. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time, and everyday life. London, England: Continuum.
17.
LorimerH. (2011). Walking: New forms of spaces for studies of pedestrianism. In CresswellT.MerrimanP. (Eds.), Geographies of mobilities: Practices, spaces, subjects (pp. 19-34). Farnham, England: Ashgate.
18.
LundK. (2005). Seeing in motion and the touching eye: Walking over Scotlands’s mountains. Etnofoor, 181, 27-42.
19.
MikesellL.BromleyE. (2012). Patient centered, nurse averse? Nurses’ care experiences in a 21st-century hospital. Qualitative Health Research, 22, 1659-1671. doi:10.1177/1049732312458180
20.
OstroffE. (1997). Mining our natural resources: The user as expert. INNOVATION: The Quarterly Journal of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), 16(1), 33-35.
21.
PallasmaaJ. (2005). The eyes of the skin : Architecture and the senses. Chichester, England: Wiley-Academy.
22.
PatersonM. (2009). Haptic geographies: Ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions. Progress in Human Geography, 33, 766-788. doi:10.1177/0309132509103155
23.
PinkS. (2008). An urban tour: The sensory sociality of ethnographic place-making. Ethnography, 9, 175-196. doi:10.1177/1466138108089467
24.
PolsJ.MoserI. (2009). Cold technologies versus warm care? On affective and social relations with and through care technologies. ALTER: European Journal of Disability Research/Revue Européenne de Recherche Sur Le Handicap, 3, 159-178. doi:10.1016/j.alter.2009.01.003
25.
PriorL. (1988). The architecture of the hospital: A study of spatial organization and medical knowledge. British Journal of Sociology, 39, 86-113.
26.
RasmussenS. (1964). Experiencing architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
TuanY. (1977). Space and place : The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
29.
UlrichR. (1984). View through a windowmayinfluence recovery from surgery. Science, 224, 420-421. doi:10.1126/science.6143402
30.
WattsL.UrryJ. (2008). Moving methods, travelling time. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, 860-874.
31.
WibeT.HellesøR.SlaughterL.EkstedtM. (2011). Lay people’s experiences with reading their medical record, Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1570-1573. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.03.006.
32.
WilsonK.LukerK. A. (2006). At home in hospital? Interaction and stigma in people affected by cancer. Social Science & Medicine, 62, 1616-1627. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.08.053
33.
WinanceM. (2006). Trying out the wheelchair: The mutual shaping of people and devices through adjustment. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 31, 55-72.
34.
WinanceM. (2010). Care and disability: Practices of experimenting, tinkering with, and arranging people and medical aids. In MolA.MoserI.PolsJ. (Eds.), Care in practice : On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms (pp. 93-118). Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript.
