Visual comfort in nursing rooms, from a patient’s perspective

Sammanfattning: The awareness regarding important aspects of how to plan and design healthcare environments is something that is constantly progressing. Even though these environments can be seen as complex, the knowledge and understanding of its many different users is often taken into consideration in today’s planning. Several studies have shown positive effects on the visual performance among the hospital staff but also positive effects regarding visual comfort that facilitates recovery and well-being among patients. However, when planning lighting in healthcare environments today, the focus often lies on providing good lighting qualities regarding the visual performance of the hospital staff and the patients are, by that, not taken in consideration to the same level of extent. Therefore this study was focused on analyzing if certain demands could be set on lighting in a nursing room, to improve the experience of visual comfort, from a patient perspective, while using two different lighting scenarios. The thesis has been conducted using an already approved and widely used method Evidence based design (EBD) through a literature study, a pre-study, and an experiment. This to evaluate and develop an innovative design to facilitate visual comfort from a patient's perspective. The visual parameters that the experiment has been focusing on are glare, luminance, contrasts, shadows, lighting principles, and the perception of objects. These parameters have been evaluated from a sitting, standing and lying position in two different lighting scenarios, developed from the hypothesis, without access to daylight. A healthcare environment has a number of different users, that all use the facilities in different ways. Therefore it was important that the innovative design, constructed for the experiment, did not compromise the visual comfort or need of light for the other users. A questionnaire was created, based on the visual parameters, to help answer the research questions. The experiment had a total of 30 participants, where each participant answered the questionnaire six times, one for each position and a total of three times in each lighting scenario.   The results were compiled and the mean values were analyzed to evaluate differences and similarities between the two lighting scenarios and between the positions. The results of the experiment show that there are certain demands that can be set on the artificial lighting in a nursing room, and it also shows that it is of great importance to plan for a various lighting environment since it can enhance the experience of visual comfort. Despite this, it is important for a lighting designer to carefully analyze and evaluate the patient's need for light in the specific ward that is being designed. To achieve a sustainable lighting solution it is important to remember that all the sustainability factors, such as the social, economic and environmental factors, are equally important to create a sustainable development.