Nursing staff's experiences of working in an evidence-based designed ICU patient room-An interview study.

INTRODUCTION

It has been known for centuries that environment in healthcare has an impact, but despite this, environment has been overshadowed by technological and medical progress, especially in intensive care. Evidence-based design is a concept concerning integrating knowledge from various research disciplines and its application to healing environments.

OBJECTIVE

The aim was to explore the experiences of nursing staff of working in an evidence-based designed ICU patient room.

METHOD

Interviews were carried out with eight critical care nurses and five assistant nurses and then subjected to qualitative content analysis.

FINDINGS

The experience of working in an evidence-based designed intensive care unit patient room was that the room stimulates alertness and promotes wellbeing in the nursing staff, fostering their caring activities but also that the interior design of the medical and technical equipment challenges nursing actions.

CONCLUSIONS

The room explored in this study had been rebuilt in order to create and evaluate a healing environment. This study showed that the new environment had a great impact on the caring staffs' wellbeing and their caring behaviour. At a time when turnover in nurses is high and sick leave is increasing, these findings show the importance of interior design ofintensive care units.