Assessing the Restorative Quality of Healthcare Indoor Environment

Abstract

Abstract The restorative quality of healthcare environment is of vital significance for patients’ mental well-being, which would influence their overall recovery through an psychology-physiology interaction. However, there were few applicable methods to assess such quality. This study was therefore conducted to develop the Hospital Indoor Restoration Scale (HIRS) for the user-centered environmental evaluation. To achieve this, a literature review was made to screen out items of the scale, which was tested with surveys among patients, and further modified through statistical analyses. The result shows that the restorative quality of hospitals’ indoor environment could be evaluated by the 16-item scale of three dimensions, namely Vitality, Reassurance, and Support. The model could explain 73.61% of the variance, and the Confirmatory Data Analysis shows that it fits the hypothesis well and has good validity (χ2/df = 3.20, GFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.95); The Cronbach α ≥0.88, indicating good reliability of the scale. The study has completed the theoretical construction of hospitals’ indoor restoration and offered a guidance for related architects, managers and policy makers to make evaluations and optimization of healthcare environment for patients’ restorative outcome improvement.