Roger S Ulrich

Chalmers University of Technology · Centre for Healthcare Architecture

The chapter explains Roger Ulrich's Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), which provides a detailed and logically consistent explanation for why nature exposure can reduce psychological and physiological stress, promote improved health outcomes, and foster increased performance on high-order cognitive tasks requiring flexibility in thinking and creative p...

Aim: This review will identify, evaluate and synthesize the literature related to evidence-based design of healthcare environments and to identify impacts of the built environment on the outcomes and experiences of patients, significant others and staff. Design: A mixed-method systematic review of literature 2010-2018. Methods: Database search...

Objectives Measure the immediate change in intensive care unit (ICU) family members’ state stress levels from the beginning to the end of a person’s visit to a hospital garden and compare the changes produced by the garden with those associated with spending time in indoor hospital environments intended for respite and relaxation. Background No pr...

Introduction American nurses report sleeping an average of 6.8 hours per night on workdays, which is less than the recommended 7-9 hours. Burnout, which is comprised of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP) and personal accomplishment (PA), is common among nurses and may contribute to insufficient sleep quantity and sleep disruption. We...

Background: Nurses working in hospital environments are at risk for burnout. Exposure to nature has psychological benefits, but the effect of hospital gardens on nurse burnout is less understood. Objective: To compare the effect on nurse burnout of taking daily work breaks in a hospital-integrated garden with the effect of indoor-only breaks. M...

Program for Technical Standards Concept program for Psychiatric Facilities

The article describes a conceptual model proposing that aggression in psychiatric facilities may be reduced by designing the physical environment with ten evidence-grounded stress-reducing features. The model was tested in a newer hospital in Sweden having wards with nine of the ten features. Data on two clinical markers of aggressive behavior, com...

Objective Healthcare-oriented design in hospitals can promote better clinical outcomes. Creating optimal facilities may increase treatment effects. We investigated the influence of the treatment room on effects of exercise therapy. Methods In a mixed-method randomised controlled double-blind trial, middle-aged individuals reporting knee or hip pai...

Context effects are described as effects of a given treatment, not directly caused by the treatment itself, but rather caused by the context in which treatment is delivered. Exercise is a recommended core treatment in clinical guidelines for musculoskeletal disorders. Although moderately effective overall, variation is seen in size of response to e...

Most patients with critical cardiac or thoracic conditions will at some stage pass through the cardiothoracic critical care unit. Critical care presents more complex clinical data than any other area of medicine. Continuous monitoring makes diagnosis easy and further information can be easily obtained via a variety of diagnostic tools. Core Topics...

People have cultivated plants and other natural elements in urban environments virtually since the advent of the earliest human cities. Recent research in the social sciences suggests that passive interactions with large scale natural environments may have health benefits. These early fmdings with large scale natural environments are consistent wit...

The physical facilities in which healthcare services are performed play an important role in the healing process. Evidence-based design in healthcare is a developing field of study that holds great promise for benefiting key stakeholders: patients, families, physicians, and nurses, as well as other healthcare staff and organizations. In this paper,...

Art is assumed to possess therapeutic benefits of healing for children, as part of patient-focused design in health care. Since the psychological and physiological well-being of children in health care settings is extremely important in contributing to the healing process, it is vitally important to identify what type of art supports stress reducti...

Background unstable coronary disease is a stressful situation and environmental influences may increase stress mechanisms important for the cardiovascular status. Aim to evaluate acoustic influence on patients with coronary artery disease and to test if the effects of poor sound absorption on work environment affects quality of care and medical sta...

Anger and stress management have become important issues in the modern workplace. One out of four American workers report themselves to be chronically angry, which has been linked to negative outcomes such as retaliatory behavior, revenge, interpersonal aggression, poor work performance, absenteeism, and increased turnover. We hypothesized that peo...

This report surveys and evaluates the scientific research on evidence-based healthcare design and extracts its implications for designing better and safer hospitals. It builds on a literature review conducted by researchers in 2004. Research teams conducted a new and more exhaustive search for rigorous empirical studies that link the design of hosp...

There has recently been heightened recognition that environmental factors can influence pain. Clinicians involved in delivering multidisciplinary pain programs often structure the social environment of their treatment settings to help promote adaptive responses to pain. Recent theories of pain (e.g. Craig, 2003, Melzack, 1999, Fields & Basbaum, 199...

Literature on healthcare architecture and evidence-based design has rarely considered explicitly that patient outcomes may be worsened by intra-hospital transport (IHT), which is defined as transport of patients within the hospital. The article focuses on the effects of IHTs on patient complications and outcomes, and the implications of such impact...

This is a time of enormous investment in new health-care buildings. The UK plans to create upwards of a hundred hospitals and thousands of primary-care clinics and surgery centres. In the USA, more than $200 billion will be spent on new hospitals over the next decade. This wave of construction provides an opportunity to create better buildings by u...

This study evaluates three healing gardens surrounding a pediatric cancer center. All gardens contained seating, flowers and plants, but varied in size, features, and in user groups’ access to them. A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) yielded a dataset of 1400 garden-users for whom demographic information, activities, and length-of-stay were recorded...

Previous research from environmental psychology shows that human well-being suffers in windowless environments in many ways. In addition, research shows that a window view of nature is psychologically and physiologically beneficial to humans. Current window substitutes, still images and video, lack three dimensional properties necessary for a reali...

Stress, strain, and fatigue at the workplace have previously not been studied in relation to acoustic conditions. To examine the influence of different acoustic conditions on the work environment and the staff in a coronary critical care unit (CCU). Psychosocial work environment data from start and end of each individual shift were obtained from th...

To evaluate the possible role of room acoustics on patients with coronary artery disease and to test the hypothesis that a poor acoustics environment is likely to produce a bad work environment resulting in unwanted sound that could adversely affect the patients. A total of 94 patients admitted to the intensive coronary heart unit at Huddinge Unive...

This report is a record of the 'Exploring the Patient Environment' workshop organised by NHS Estates earlier this year. The workshop brought together leading researchers, healthcare professionals and people involved in the hospital design process, to explore the implications of recent studies on the effects of buildings on health outcomes and to di...

This study used an experimental design and multiple measures to ascertain whether stress in healthcare consumers undergoing a procedure known to be stressful - blood donation - would be affected by modest changes in a clinic environment. Four different environmental conditions were presented to 872 blood donors (68% males; 32% females; mean age = 4...

Considering how to communicate and convince healthcare administrators of plant and garden benefits reflects a real growth and evolution since the first national people-plant symposium 10 years ago in Washington DC. How can we communicate in an influential, convincing way with key audiences such as healthcare administrators and physicians? We have t...

... of workplaces than do comparable groups with views of built environments, and ... by emphasizing the inclusion of characteristics and opportunities in the environment that re ... the following general guidelines are proposed for creating supportive healthcare environments: • Foster ...

A considerable body of folklore and scientific research alludes to the efficacy of the vernacular environment to influence both aesthetic experience and general well-being. To examine explicitly whether stress recovery and/or immunization varies as a function of the roadside environment, 160 college-age participants, both male and female, viewed on...

Two studies were done comparing the preferences of high and low sensation seekers for nature paintings representing different styles. The paintings had been previously rated for qualities of complexity and tension. Factor analyses established five stylistic categories among the paintings. In both studies high sensation seekers had a relatively grea...

Different conceptual perspectives converge to predict that if individuals are stressed, an encounter with most unthreatening natural environments will have a stress reducing or restorative influence, whereas many urban environments will hamper recuperation. Hypotheses regarding emotional, attentional and physiological aspects of stress reducing inf...

To summarize briefly, key general points in this presentation include the following: To promote wellness, healthcare facilities should be designed to support patients in coping with stress. As general compass points for designers, scientific research suggests that healthcare environments will support coping with stress and promote wellness if they...

Psychophysiological approaches to studying leisure use physiological measures to assess stress, attention, emotions, and other responses. These methods are discussed from the standpoint of their capabilities, advantages, and limitations for leisure research. Emphasis is given to the use of psychophysiological approaches for investigating stress red...

The rapidly expanding research record concerning aesthetic, emotional and physiological response to visual landscapes is summarized, with emphasis on aesthetic preferences for views containing trees and other vegetation. The survey is set within a conceptual perspective suggesting that affective responses such as aesthetic preference are central to...

Records on recovery after cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter po...

Argues that evolutionary heritage underlies humans' consistent preference for stimuli from the natural environment and that research on affective and aesthetic responses is needed to understand human interaction with the environment. It is noted that the rapidly expanding empirical record concerning aesthetic and affective responses to natural envi...

Subjects viewed sixty color slides of either (1) nature with water, (2) nature dominated by vegetation, or (3) urban environments without water or vegetation. The information rates of the three slide samples were equivalent. Measurements were taken of the effects of the slide presentations on alpha amplitude, heart rate, and emotional states. Resul...

Psychological as well as active recreation benefits of a residential park were examined through a questionnaire, open-ended interviews, a photograph rating procedure, and observation of activity. Although respondents attached greatest importance to the Passive Nature factor, the park's ranking in terms of the importance of its Recreation/Social ben...

The findings suggest that stressed individuals feel significantly better after exposure to nature scenes rather than to American urban scenes lacking nature elements. Compared to the influences of the urban scenes, the salient effect of the nature exposures was to increase Positive Affect — including feelings of affection friendliness, playfulness,...

Evolution has given human beings strong perceptual and informational biases that affect aesthetic preferences for landscapes. A model of visual landscape preference developed largely from these biases forecasts high preference for scenes (a) that have various attributes facilitating perception and comprehension, or (b) that convey to the observer a...

DISSERTATION (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Dissertation Abstracts International,