KJC Korea
Journal Central

Purpose: As medicare services have gotten spreaded, clinical laboratory has been dominant position. So, it has been acted for quality control and clinical pathology accreditation. But there has been quite deficient information to evaluate working space and technical standards of medical laboratory for accreditation. This study goals to figure out accreditation standard and design guideline for clinical laboratory, and to give safe and efficient design information. Methods: This study has been searched by literature for accreditation standards and design guidelines of clinical pathology in USA, UK, and Germany. Results: Three countries have accredited based on working lab space, staff space, storage space, patient space and health and safety equipment. Design guidelines of three countries commonly have focused on worktable layout, worktable distance and module, and specific laboratory biosafety level. And USA guidelines stress on the architectural design such as design process and passage distance for escape, UK stress on the efficiency as functional work flow and construction cost, lastly Germany design guidelines stress on the operator’s safety distance and workstation. Three countries have not only accreditation standards but also design guidelines for more specific quality management, separating from accrediting institute. Implications: In korea, it has been needed to make clinical laboratory design guideline for the safe and efficient environment and reliable and competitive medical service.

Purpose: As the concerns for the environment are gradually prioritized, increasing interests of environment- friendly buildings are drawn. The Green Standard for Energy & Environmental Design (G-SEED) has been strengthened. However, there are no specific assessment criteria that reflect the special situation of healthcare facility. UK, US and Japan have green building certifications specially designed to evaluate sustainable healthcare facilities. This study has been started in order to provide basic information for developing assessment criteria for healthcare facilities in Korean Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design. Methods: In this study, we investigated three foreign green building certifications and compared their assessment system and criteria for healthcare buildings. Results: Each of the three foreign certification standards showed the difference in the system, but all contained the contents specific to healthcare facilities. Evaluation items were affected by regional cultural environment and also medical environment. Patient safety and integrative planning were the most important assessment contents. Implications: Based on this analysis, Korean Green Standard for Energy & Environmental Design for healthcare facilities will be developed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a predictive model for patient visibility in Korean ICUs (corridor or continental type). Methods: The measures of static visibility were used to quantify the patient visibility (upper third part of the patient bed) from the nurse station. The measure of space programme and area distribution (patient zone percentage, staff zone percentage and departmental gross square meter per patient bed) were calculated by using AutoCAD and MS Excel programs. Regression analysis was conducted for visibility as dependant variable with independent variables of patient area percentage, staff area percentage as well as departmental gross square meter per bed by using IBM SPSS. Results: (1) Average patient visibility and percentage of patient area in ICU shows a strong negative correlation (r²=0.66), p=0.01. (2) Patient visibility in Korean ICU (corridor or continental type) can be calculated as below with the given conditions: Y= -1.449(X)+124.3±6, Y is the total visibility of the ICU (corridor or continental type) and X is the percentage of patient area in the unit. Conditions:1. Given that the unit has a mixed programme of open bed and closed patient rooms and 2. The unit have a minimum of 20% patient rooms. Implications: This study may contribute to the visibility analysis of existing and future ICU design (corridor or continental type) in Korea to achieve maximum patient visibility and reduced patient mortality.

Purpose: This study is focus on investigation of user’s spontaneous behavior in the public space of ward where chronic patients are hospitalized. Methods: The notion and necessity of social healing environment is analyzed by literature review. User’s location and behaviour are investigated for analyzing behavior by visiting the six wards. Results: The result 1) Stay is main behavior of users. 2) The frequency of stay is high in the place where are planned as the dayroom, the program room and the balcony. 3) In the corridor, the users are staying around court and single side corridor. And the users who are staying in the ward planned middle corridor and double corridor are spreaded all over the corridor. As the result of the analysis of correlation between frequency of user for stay and area of public space, 4) The area of the dayroom, the program room and the balcony is bigger, the frequency of users are higher. 5) There is no correlation between area of corridor and frequency of users. 6) When the density of user is highest in the place for stay, one person occupied 1.96㎡. Implications: Hereafter the public space, which social healing environment is considered, is planned, this study could suggest the directions of architectural planning about area.

Purpose: The MERS(Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreaks in Korea highlighted dramatically the failings of traditional hospital environment for controlling or preventing infections among both patients and healthcare workers. MERS is transmitted by droplets that can be airborne over a limited area. The point should be emphasized that MERS in South Korea was predominantly a hospital-acquired (not a community-acquired) infection, because approximately 93% of MERS cases were resulted from exposure in hospital settings. This paper tries to suggest the design guidelines of negative pressured isolation ward for the sake of proper control of severe respiratory infectious diseases. Methods: Literature survey on the design guideline and regulations of airborne infection wards in Korea, Europe U.K. and CDC of U.S. have been carries out. 4 special infection wards in Hongkong, Germany, Japan and Korea have been surveyed in order to make the best use of the experiences related to facility design and operations. Results: Operating system influencing the facility design, space organizations of infectious ward including required space and zoning, and circulations of patients, staffs and materials are proposed. Implications: The results of this paper can be the basic data for the design of the airborne infection ward and relevant regulations. Afterwards in-depth study such as the development of space standards for the single bedroom, locker room and so on could be explored.