An Exploratory and Comparative Evaluation on the Spatial Perception of Two Densities of Multioccupancy Hospital Rooms

The objective of this article was to explore interior spatial qualifications on patient perception of two densities of multioccupancy hospital rooms.

The research setting of this study was the three- and six-person capacity hospital rooms used for treatment of patients at a large hospital in a major metropolitan city in Turkey.

The subjects used in the study were randomly selected from among patients treated in the surgical medical sciences' departments of the hospital. Accordingly, a research questionnaire was applied to a total of 101 subjects.

Results have shown that the three-person rooms were assessed more positively for privacy, functional, and perceptual qualifications compared to the six-person rooms. An increase in the number of persons and interior units of rooms affects negatively the auditory privacy and privacy areas of other patients.

Consequently, although these rooms with different spatial sizes were very similar for concentration of persons and commodities, six-person rooms were perceived to be more crowded than three-person rooms.