Review of Research Literature on Interruptions and Performance for Hospital Design: Hospital and Office Comparison

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the role of the physical environment in task interruptions in the healthcare settings. Many dangerous events such as airplane crash and medical errors are the result of human errors and, these errors are often the result of interruptions during a critical task of professional workers. In fact, the physical environment that determines accessibility and visibility among people affects interruptions significantly, but architectural studies have given little attention to the management of interruptions. Methods: Therefore, the researcher reviewed research literature in other fields to find out how the physical environment affected interruptions. Many studies were from management, human factors, and health care, but few from architecture. First the author examined the impact of interruptions, second described the social context of interruptions and the role of the physical environment. Results: Findings included that description of the physical environment was not very clear in studies from management and human factors, while little work had been done on interruptions in architecture. The author proposed study design that compensated shortcomings of each field by combining approaches from management, human factors, and architecture. Implications: Unit design strategies such as distributed nurse stations can affect interruptions and layout analysis such as space syntax analysis can evaluate visibility and accessibility of floor plans in the preliminary design phase.

병원 디자인을 위한 업무간섭에 관한 문헌조사 연구: 병원과 사무실의 비교