School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
Key Laboratory of Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area of Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
Front Public Health. 2021 Dec 6;9:774553. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.774553. eCollection 2021.
The workload in the Infection Disease Nursing Unit (IDNU) is increasing dramatically due to COVID-19, and leads to the prevalence of fatigue among the frontline nurses, threatening their health, and safety. The built environment and design could fundamentally affect the fatigue of nurses for a long-term perspective. This article aims to extract the environmental factors of IDNU and explore nurses' perceptions of these factors on the work-related fatigue. It would produce evidences for mitigating the fatigue by environmental interferons. A cross-sectional design was employed by combination of focus group interview and written survey. Environmental factors of IDNU were collected from healthcare design experts ( = 8). Nurses ( = 64) with frontline COVID-19 experiences in IDNU were recruited to assess these factors individually. Four environmental factors were identified as: Nursing Distance (ND), Spatial Crowdness (SC), Natural Ventilation, and Light (NVL), and Spatial Privacy (SP). Among them, ND was considered as the most influential factor on the physical fatigue, while SP was on the psychological fatigue. Generally, these environmental factors were found to be more influential on the physical fatigue than the psychological fatigue. Technical titles were found to be associated with the nurses' perceptions of fatigue by these environmental factors. Nurse assistant and practical nurse were more likely to suffer from the physical fatigue by these factors than senior nurse. The result indicated that environmental factors of IDNU were associated with the nurses' fatigue, particularly on the physical aspect. Environmental interventions of design could be adopted to alleviate the fatigue by these factors such as reducing the ND and improving the spatial privacy. The accurate interventional measures should be applied to fit nurses' conditions due to their technical titles. More attention should be given to the low-ranking nurses, who account for the majority and are much vulnerable to the physical fatigue by environmental factors.
传染病护理单元（IDNU）的工作量因 COVID-19 而大幅增加，导致一线护士疲劳普遍，威胁到他们的健康和安全。建筑环境和设计从长远来看可能会从根本上影响护士的疲劳程度。本文旨在提取 IDNU 的环境因素，并探讨护士对这些因素与工作相关疲劳的看法。这将为通过环境干扰素减轻疲劳提供依据。采用焦点小组访谈和书面调查相结合的横断面设计。从医疗保健设计专家（=8）那里收集 IDNU 的环境因素。招募具有 IDNU 一线 COVID-19 经验的护士（=64 名）对这些因素进行个体评估。确定了四个环境因素：护理距离（ND）、空间拥挤度（SC）、自然通风和采光（NVL）以及空间隐私（SP）。其中，ND 被认为对体力疲劳的影响最大，而 SP 则对心理疲劳的影响最大。总的来说，这些环境因素对体力疲劳的影响大于心理疲劳。研究发现，技术职称与护士对这些环境因素引起的疲劳的看法有关。护士助理和实习护士比高级护士更容易受到这些因素引起的体力疲劳的影响。结果表明，IDNU 的环境因素与护士的疲劳有关，特别是在体力方面。可以采用环境设计干预措施来减轻这些因素引起的疲劳，例如减少 ND 和改善空间隐私。由于技术职称的原因，应采用准确的干预措施来适应护士的情况。应该更加关注占多数且更容易受到环境因素引起的体力疲劳影响的低级别护士。
