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Planning recommendations for structural infection prevention in operating, emergency and intensive care and in normal nursing care
The occurrence and increasing spread of multiresistant germs and nosocomial infections in German hospitals poses a major problem. A great deal is undertaken by medicine and hospital management to avoid and contain this. The spatial circumstances and structures of hospital buildings have not, however, hitherto been the focus of observations on preventive medicine.
But there are definitely interactions between the arrangement, distribution and size of the hygiene-relevant rooms or areas of a hospital and the danger of the occurrence and spread as well as the combating of hospital-specific infections.
The planning and realisation of future hospital buildings could make a significant contribution to combating nosocomial infections if greater attention is paid to the design of hygiene-optimised building and room structures than there has been so far. Planning recommendations have been sketched out here.
In future, the hospital will also have to react to further changes. Here, planning must consider an range of structural, technical, material development-related and organisational aspects. The research and development of innovative spatial contexts from an infection prevention perspective will become even more important in the future.
With all the necessary planning of a highly complex and hygiene-robust hospital, however, the architect must not forget the most important function of healthcare buildings apart from the spatial design: namely to detect patients’ diseases, to treat them and ideally to cure them. The challenges to architecture will therefore remain.
Published by
Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR)
within the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR)
Supervisors
Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
Department WB 3 “Research in Building and Construction“
Verena Kluth (
verena.kluth@bbr.bund.de
)
Guido Hagel (
guido.hagel@bbr.bund.de
)
Authors
Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Sunder
Dr.-Ing. Jan Holzhausen
Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Petra Gastmeier
Dr. rer. medic. Andrea Haselbeck
Dr.-Ing. Inka Mai, M. Sc.
There is also a German version of this publication available:
>> Bauliche Hygiene im Klinikbau