Evaluation of critical care space requirements for three frequent and high-risk tasks.

Spatial requirements for clinical tasks have been recommended from many sources over the past 15 years, but little empiric evidence is offered to support recommendations. This article describes a series of functional space experiments using clinical scenarios to test the spatial requirements for a bed space in a critical care setting. The analysis found that an average of 23.26 m(2) was needed for a bed-to-bed transfer followed by 22.87 m(2) for a resuscitation task. The overall average space requirement for the three tasks for a patient and caregiver zone (ergonomic envelope) was 22.83 m(2), excluding family and hygiene zones and in-room storage.