Perceived Hospital Environment Quality Indicators: The Case of Healthcare Places for Terminal Patients

The “user-centered” design perspective (Gifford, 2002) suggests that healthcare places should improve their environmental quality in order to both meet the users’ needs and become “more humane” care environments, facilitating a higher level of patients’ satisfaction, wellbeing, life. hospice is specific category healthcare, given specificity its target population, i.e., terminal patients. This research aimed (i) verify factorial structure an adapted version Perceived Hospital Environment Quality Indicators (PHEQIs, Fornara et al., 2006) for environment; (ii) test reliability such indicators; (iii) detect association between each indicator global satisfaction toward hospice. Participants (N = 135) were patients, relatives, staff eleven Italian hospices. They had fill questionnaire including items tapping three diverse settings (i.e., external spaces, interior common private spaces). confirmatory factor analysis run scale produced six reliable Hospice PHEQIs. As expected, significant relationships most them overall environment emerged.