A comparative study of occupancy and patient care quality in four different types of intensive care units in a children's hospital.
This paper reports a comparative study of occupancy and patient care quality in four types of intensive care units in a children's hospital,: an Infant Care Center (ICC), a Medical/Surgical (Med/Surg) unit, a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), each featuring a mix of multi-bed and private room (PR) patient care environments. The project is prompted by interest by the project sponsor in a pre-occupancy analysis, before the units are upgraded to exclusive PR designs. Methods comprised, for each unit: (1) observations of ergonomic design features; (2) task activity analyses of job performance of selected staff; and (3) use of a survey to collect perceptions by unit nursing and house staff (HS) of indicators of occupancy and patient care quality.


CONCLUSIONS
(1) the five most common task activities are interaction with patients, charting, and interaction with equipment, co-workers and family members; (2) job satisfaction, patient care, work environment, job, patient care team interaction, and general occupancy quality rankings by ICC and/or NICU respondents are significantly higher than those by other staff respondents; and (3) ergonomic design shortcomings noted are excess noise, problems with equipment, and work environment, job-related health, and patient care quality issues.
School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, 625 Hampshire Dr., Mendota Heights, MN 55120, USA. smith293@umn.edu
Thomas J
TJ
Smith
D006804:Ergonomics; D005260:Female; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006801:Humans; D015278:Intensive Care Units, Pediatric; D007374:Interior Design and Furnishings / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D061214:Patient Safety; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires