• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.67-74
• /
• 2024

Purpose: The identification and quantification of indoor airborne contaminants, including bio-aerosols, particulates, and gaseous contaminants, are crucial for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality for hospital operating rooms (ORs). Laparoscopic surgery has become widely accepted for various surgical procedures due to its rapid recovery rate and the low risk associated with small incisions compared to conventional open surgery. The objective of this study is to investigate the indoor air quality in hospital ORs and to identify indoor airborne contaminants generated during laparoscopic surgery. Methods: Measurements of an indoor environment, including temperature, humidity and air quality, were performed in an OR before and during a laparoscopic surgery. Indoor airborne contaminants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), formaldehyde, carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), suspended indoor particles, and airborne bacteria, were measured simultaneously. Results: The study determined that the concentrations of indoor air particles and airborne bacteria increased during the surgery but were within acceptable levels. However, the concentration of CO₂, reached a high level of 1,791 ppm due to the CO₂ gas required for maintaining the pneumoperitoneum during the surgery. Implications: The results emphasized the use of ventilation and filtration in a laparoscopic surgery room to lower the concentration of filterable and non-filterable contaminants.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.4 no.6
• /
• pp.87-94
• /
• 1998

Recently, health care facilities has been rapidly reformed. This reformatioin has been so per vasive that even the newest hospital is rapidly becoming obsolete. Since the health care field is continually evolving, architecture for health must be adapted to the new environments. Today, a society with the emphasis on the broader, interactive scope of grobal markets and grobal communications, pursues the health network as the next step in evolution of health care facilities. Therefore, architectural firms will be forced to develop new skills, services, emphases, and organizational structures in order to respond to the rapidly changing needs and demands. It is our hope to present the possibilities of this healthcare network of the future.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.47-60
• /
• 2019

Purpose: Regional public hospitals have implemented functional reinforcement projects, and the facilities to accommodate them have increased in size. Nevertheless users in hospital are concerned about space shortage and area imbalances. Therefore I will trace the factors and trends that influence the size, and derive the relationship between these and the uses' critical opinion. Methods: Among the indicators for determining the size of medical facilities, the number of beds and total floor area are the essential indicators that directly affect the composition of space and allocation of area inside the medical facility. The purpose of this study is to investigate the change and the factors of change on the these two indicators in regional public hospitals and analyze the trend of changes. Results: In accordance with support undertaking, regional public hospitals have been increased the number of chronic-based beds and expanded additional facilities such as O.P.D specialized centers, emergency centers and funeral homes for reflecting the needs of the regions and times. However, as a result of analyzing the area, regional public hospitals are growing in size mainly on the ward and O.P.D is only expanded the scope of functional reinforcement division but total area level of O.P.D is lower than the recent level. In addition, the levels of D&T, Supply, mechanical/electrical equipment area related to medical support and control environment quality are very low. This is because the functional reinforcement projects have been done without concerning diagnose the whole facility. Implications: If functional reinforcement projects are conducted, to cope with problems of space shortage and imbalance of area, it is judged that an architectural planning that comprehensively analyzes existing facilities and related departments should be included.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.15-22
• /
• 2011

Nowadays, a proportion of healthcare service for the elderly has been improved due to the factors, such as a prolonged life expectancy, a growth of aging population and a change of member of family. For these factors, it is necessary for the elderly to receive treatment for multidisciplinary diseases, associated with psychological care of sociological concept. It is quite difficult in an acute-care hospital to accommodate the elderly patient because of the fact that an acute-care hospital is required to maintain a high level of medical care and technical standard. That is why specialized medical service is needed for the elderly. In the case of Germany, they are at the stage of the change from large scale facilities to specialized facilities applying the integrated concept. This paper addresses the medical environmental factor and distinction of medical facilities for the elderly through survey and analysis relating to all change in Germany. Therefore, it aims to suggest a fundamental resource for architectural planning and network of medical facilities for the elderly.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.41-49
• /
• 2019

Purpose: After Mers breakout in 2015, major hospital in Korea have been renovated the emergency department to make a separate infection control zone for high-risk patient with potential infection and to improve a triage area and an entrance area for efficient patient evaluation. However, there are no specific design standards to reinforce infection control for patients and staffs safety. Therefore, it is important to establish of initial design factors in the triage and entrance area as a guideline. Methods: 5 cases which had been recently renovated are selected to analyze patient circulation and spatial composition in a triage area and an entrance area. The partial floor plans of each case are represented as bubble diagrams to help understanding of different patient circulation flows. Based on this analysis, significant design factors which should be considered in planning stage for infection control have been extracted. Results: 13 design factors are established. Using these design factors, patient circulation diagram is generated to provide an optimized suggestion for efficient infection control. Implications: This suggestion provides basic databases to start to establish design guideline in the triage area and the entrance area to minimize infection spreading in the emergency department.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
• /
• v.15 no.1 s.54
• /
• pp.106-112
• /
• 2006

Buildings undergo changes by various factors according as pass at time. Due to that social requests and issues form one common sense of value and this would influence the architect's design intention. In fact, the form and function of buildings have coped with transition of the common sense of value by each times. Hospital architecture is also changed in function, scale and technology since, Kwanghyewon which was the first western style hospital in Korea was established in 1885. It is changing that the social needs for hospital which was a basic function of healing to laying emphasis on the function of precaution. According to this, the change of hospital spaces means that it can promote healing environment which is expanded from the modern concept of isolation, accommodation and urban sanitation. These changed concepts were adopted limited areas in hospitals at first however, nowadays they are expanding to other areas. So, this is caused to make the image of the hospital. From this point of view, Entry space is an example to show the changes. This study is intended to determine the overall space structure of entry area and to classify and analyze the difference.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.53-61
• /
• 2022

Purpose: As the medical environment changes, the size of medical facilities continues to change. Of course, it is not easy to analyze the correlation between changes in the medical environment and changes in facility size in a rigorous scientific method. However, the results of investigating and analyzing changes in the size that occurred for any cause be able to serve as important references for future medical facility architectural plans. Methods: This study surveyed 68 general hospitals in Seoul for 15 years from 2005 to 2020. The change in the number of beds was investigated with data from the Ministry and Welfare. The gross area change was confirmed by analyzing the of all hospitals. Results & Implications: As a result of the survey, general hospitals in Seoul show a common phenomenon in which all hospitals except one case have expanded their size in the direction of increasing the gross area per bed over the past 15 years. However, in the method, a relatively small hospital with less than 500 beds mainly chose to reduce the number of beds. Large hospitals increased both the number of beds and the gross area, however showed a significant increase in the gross area.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.91-98
• /
• 2022

Tetanus is a potentially fatal public health illness resulted from the neurotoxins generated by Clostridium tetani. C. tetani is not easily culturable and culturing the relevant bacteria from infected wounds has rarely been useful in diagnosis; PCR-based assays can only be conducted at highly sophisticated laboratories. Therefore, a real-time recombinase polymerase amplification assay (Exo-RPA) was constructed to identify the fragments of the neurotoxin gene of C. tetani. Primers and the exo probe targeting the conserved region were designed, and the resulting amplicons could be detected in less than 20 min, with a detection limit of 20 copies/reaction. The RPA assay displayed good selectivity, and there were no cross-reactions with other infectious bacteria common in penetrating wounds. Tests of target-spiked serum and pus extract revealed that RPA is robust to interfering factors and has great potential for further development for biological sample analysis. This method has been confirmed to be reliable for discriminating between toxic and nontoxic C. tetani strains. The RPA assay dramatically improves the diagnostic efficacy with simplified device architecture and is a promising alternative to real-time PCR for tetanus detection.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.9-17
• /
• 2017

Purpose : The easiest and most cost-effective way to prevent medical-related infections is known as proper hand washing of health care workers. The experience of MERS in domestic medical institutions has increased the importance of hand hygiene for medical workers to prevent infections in hospitals. It is necessary to investigate the level of hand hygiene practice by type of medical institutions and the factors influencing the infection prevention. Methods : Domestic and overseas hand hygiene related business cases and literature data were collected and analyzed in order to investigate the hand hygiene status of medical institutions in Korea. Result : As a result of hand hygiene monitoring of all hospital-level medical institutions in 2016, the total number of observations was 24,328 and the hand hygiene performance rate was 75.9%. The hand hygiene performance rate of hospitals was 71.5% for general hospitals, 75% for general hospitals, and 81.3% for hospitals. Implications : In general hospitals and hospitals, the HR(Hand Rubbing) method is preferred as a way of performing hand hygiene, whereas the HW(Hand Washing) method is relatively high in the small hospitals. It is estimated that the HW system is preferred because of the cost burden at the hospital medical institution. Therefore, it is necessary to compensate the related expenses to improve the hand hygiene performance of the physicians who are engaged in the hospitals.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.7-16
• /
• 2014

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to examine the nurses' needs for the spatial composition of geriatric hospital. Methods : The survey method was used for collecting the data. The subjects were 110 nurses who worked at 6 geriatric hospitals in Busan. They answered the questionnaire by the self-administered method. The questionnaire consisted of items which asked the spatial composition of patient room, bathroom, dining space, resting space, care-givers' room, and garden. Results : 1) The patient room using a bed on ondol floor would be useful. Also, it would be desirable that most patient rooms consisted of 4 or 6 persons per patient room and the others were 1 or 2 persons per room. 2) The bathroom for only patients and the shower room for their families or care-givers are needed in the geriatric hospital. 3) The dining room for patients in each floor would be useful to old patients. In addition to that, the cafeteria for their families or care-givers are needed. 4) The resting space for patients and their families, for the staff, and for care-givers are needed. 5) The personal locker and refrigerator are necessary fixtures in care-givers' room. Also, table, sofa, sink, and shower booth are also needed. 6) On the base of activities of care-givers, the space for preserving, washing, and heating foods are needed. Also, the storage space for personal items and the fitting space are needed. Implications : The results of this study would be the fundamental data for space planning of the geriatric hospital.