Overview

The architecture of hospitals includes wards, outpatient clinics, medical technology, and various medical service facilities, each with different lighting requirements. Therefore, hospital lighting design must not only meet the requirements of medical technology, fully utilize the functions of medical equipment, and effectively serve medical services, but also consider creating a tranquil and harmonious lighting environment for patients, which is beneficial for their treatment and recovery. Hospital lighting fixtures must have high functionality, cleanliness, and precision. When designing lighting, it is essential to understand the nature of their work and lighting requirements, and to adopt various measures to meet the needs of different medical departments.

Purpose of Hospital Lighting Design

Color plays an important psychological therapeutic role for patients. The combination of light sources and architectural decoration, along with the rational use of natural light, will help create an atmosphere and environment conducive to patient recovery. Color is even more important for medical staff; the light source should accurately reflect the patient's skin tone and meet the requirements for surgery and treatment. Different functional medical departments have different lighting requirements. For departments such as examination rooms, instrument inspection rooms, operating rooms, and ICUs (Intensive Care Units), the color rendering of the light source must be considered, and light sources with high color rendering should be selected.

The requirements for the color temperature of light sources in hospital environmental lighting vary by region. Hospitals in colder climates should use warm white (low color temperature) light sources to create a warm feeling in the environment. In contrast, hospitals in tropical regions should use cool white (high color temperature) light sources to provide a refreshing feeling. Therefore, the visual environment is both a physiological and psychological requirement, and proper lighting design can only be carried out after careful judgment.

Lighting sources should be selected for high efficiency and energy saving, with high luminous efficacy and good color rendering. Most rooms and application areas in hospitals should use thin tube fluorescent lamps, paired with high-quality electronic ballasts or energy-saving inductive ballasts.

Appendix (Reference values for hospital building lighting illuminance):

Excerpt from: National Building Lighting Design Standard of the People's Republic of China GB50034-2004

Table 5.2.6 Standard Values for Hospital Building Lighting

Lighting Load Level

1. Factors to Consider in Hospital Lighting Design

The following major factors must be considered:

· Architectural style and spatial requirements.

· Functional zoning and ceiling height.

· Decorative style and main materials.

· The lighting forms and parameters determined by the design.

· Technical parameters of the main decorative materials, etc.

2. Guidelines for Lighting Design in Key Functional Areas

Outpatient Hall

The outpatient hall is the central area with the most frequent personnel flow, connecting various functional areas such as consultation rooms, corridors, stairs, laboratories, and radiology departments. How to design the lighting in the outpatient department to create a comfortable and efficient lighting environment directly affects the hospital's service level and brand image.

Generally, for atrium-style hall lighting, gas discharge lamps should be the main choice, and a smooth transition between natural light and artificial lighting should be handled well to prevent low illuminance in the surrounding corridors and excessive contrast between light and dark, which can cause visual discomfort.

In hall spaces with little natural light, the installation of lighting fixtures must consider maintenance convenience. Small floodlights should be installed on the side walls of the hall corridors to facilitate adjusting the angle of the floodlights and maintenance, ensuring that the light softly and evenly illuminates the hall space, making it convenient for registration, payment, consultation, and other medical work.

Consultation Room

The consultation room is a major functional area in the hospital's outpatient and emergency building, with very high requirements for spatial lighting (lighting close to natural light is optimal). This is because doctors must clearly see the patient's face, features, and subtle changes in various parts of the body while diagnosing and recording the patient's medical history, prescriptions, and laboratory orders. Therefore, the horizontal and vertical illuminance in the consultation room must meet the requirements for observation and writing, generally above 300lx. Additionally, the design of the lighting should pay attention to the combination with natural light.

The treatment room should use cool tones, and the color rendering index of the light source should be equal to or greater than 80 to help focus and concentrate. Furthermore, considering that patients may lie on their backs on the bed, the design should avoid creating direct glare in the line of sight of supine patients; therefore, it is advisable to use reflective thin tube fluorescent lamps with shading plates.

Operating Room

The operating room is the place that reflects the highest level of medical technology in hospitals, and it has extremely strict requirements for lighting. In addition to considering factors in lighting design, the overall cleanliness requirements for lamps are very high. For example, the local lighting for surgery must meet the requirements of shadowless and clean sterile conditions, and it is advisable to choose a claw-type structure shadowless surgical lamp. In terms of installation, clean sterile lamps are generally embedded in the ceiling, and an emergency lighting lamp is also required. It should be noted that ultraviolet sterilization lamps should not be installed in the operating room.

Ward lighting

General lighting in the ward should primarily consider the needs of patients while also taking into account the requirements of medical staff, creating a tranquil and warm lighting environment. According to the "Building Lighting Design Standards" GB50034—2004, the illuminance standard in the ward is 100lx, with a light source color temperature of less than 3000k, and low color temperature fluorescent lamps are generally chosen. For ordinary wards, it is advisable to use fluorescent lamps or ceiling-embedded fixtures to prevent glare that may cause discomfort to bedridden patients. For some high-end wards, reflective lighting fixtures can be used, which, although effective, require a large investment and incur high operating costs.

Waiting area

The waiting area is the zone where patients spend the most time during their visit, and it is also one of the most important areas reflecting the service level of the hospital. The comfort, convenience, and other factors of the environment are directly related to the psychological changes of patients during their wait and their medical conditions.