Impact of imaging room environment: staff job stress and satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and willingness to recommend.

BACKGROUND The built environment significantly affects the healthcare experiences of patients and staff. Healthcare administrators and building designers face the opportunity and challenge of improving healthcare experience and satisfaction through better environmental design. OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to evaluate how a novel environmental intervention for imaging rooms, which integrated multiple elements of healing environments including positive distractions and personal control over environment, affects the perceptions and satisfactions of its primary users-patients and staff. METHODS Anonymous questionnaire surveys were conducted to compare patient and staff perceptions of the physical environment, satisfaction, and stress in two types of imaging rooms: imaging rooms with the intervention installed (intervention rooms) and traditionally designed rooms without the intervention (comparison rooms). RESULTS Imaging technologists and patients perceived the intervention rooms to be significantly more pleasant-looking. Patients in the intervention rooms reported significantly higher levels of environmental control and were significantly more willing to recommend the intervention rooms to others. CONCLUSIONS The environmental intervention was effective in improving certain aspects of the imaging environment: pleasantness and environmental control. Further improvement of the imaging environment is needed to address problematic areas such as noise.