Occupancy and patient care quality benefits of private room relative to multi-bed patient room designs for five different children's hospital intensive and intermediate care units.

BACKGROUND

Prior research documents occupancy and patient care quality (OPCQ) benefits for private room (PR) relative to multi-bed (MB) designs in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

OBJECTIVE

To extend this research design to four additional types of children's hospital units: a cardiovascular care center (CVCC), an infant care center (ICC), a medical/surgical unit (Med/Surg), and a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

METHODS

Staff comments, task activities, patient care demands, and perceptual survey rankings for twelve major indicators of OPCQ were assessed with nursing staff on these units plus an NICU.

RESULTS

With the PR designs, for 38 of 48 pairwise comparisons for the twelve major OPCQ indicators, CVCC staff rankings are significantly lower than those by staff on the other four units. For 47 of 48 pairwise comparisons for the twelve major OPCQ indicators, NICU, ICC, Med/Surg, and PICU staff rankings for PR designs do not differ significantly from those for MB designs. Comments by staff on all five units target numerous PR OPCQ defects.

CONCLUSION

Design, operation and management of the patient care environments on the five different PR units evaluated in this research confront a challenge in realizing OPCQ benefits that match experience with PR NICU designs in other contexts.