Assessment of Therapeutic Impacts of Adaptable Recreational Spaces in Orthopaedic Hospitals Design: A Literature Review

Abstract

Healthcare facilities and their surrounding outdoor spaces forms part of an everyday landscape especially for inpatients. As such the trend now is to have hospital environments that brings patients close to nature so as to enhance their recovery. Accordingly, orthopaedic patients are mostly required to stay long during recovery, to enable persons with physical limitations acquire or maintain skills that will allow them to function optimally with the least amount of assistance and participate as fully as possible in the society. The aim of this research therefore, is to assess the therapeutic impact of recreational spaces that are amenable in a hospital setting. Reviewing literatures was considered as the most appropriate approach for this study. The criteria for inclusion of literatures was relevance of research work to the study with regards to the therapeutic impacts of recreation spaces with focus on literatures range from 1998 to 2018. Publications were further stratified into themes concerning the physical environment in healthcare settings and in doing so forty-two articles were determined to be eligible for evidence analysis. The research found five key components of therapeutic healing in hospital design spaces namely; aquatic features, physio therapy, and natural-view, music and noise. Consequently, the research brings to fore the design features that can accommodate recreational spaces to be gardens, courtyards, water bodies, indoor gym, seating areas, and walkways. This paper thus recommends that it is possible to integrate therapeutic features in the design of orthopaedic hospitals.