Thermal comfort in hospital and healthcare facilities : a literature review

Abstract

Hospital and healthcare facilities need to provide a variety of indoor environments due to the diverse comfort and health needs of their patients and staff. Thermal comfort is an essential part of indoor environmental quality in the hospital work environment that affects both the patient’s own health, and the wellbeing of their healthcare professional. However, the comfort of the patients is given priority due to their medical conditions. There are six main factors that directly affect thermal comfort, which can be divided into two categories personal factors and environmental factors. There is an extensive range of literature covering the area of thermal comfort. However, these have a limited focus on patient and surgical staff thermal comfort in the hospital indoor environment. Therefore, this study aims to discuss and review recent literature in the area of human thermal comfort in the operating room work environment. From the review, the paper concludes that it is important to find acceptable solutions for the various thermal comfort requirements. Nevertheless, it may be difficult to propose a general solution in view of the current design and state of ventilation systems, as large variations exist between individuals in terms of both physical and emotional satisfaction