Lighting for hospitals and healthcare facilities should promote a patient’s experience. It should also be comfortable for the staff to improve their productivity. The right lighting technology should address the requirements of specialized care spaces across the healthcare facility to facilitate the smooth running of operations round the clock. Read on to understand why the right lighting is ideal for hospitals and healthcare facilities.
How do Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities Benefit from Proper Lighting?
Light plays a crucial role in enhanced productivity and health, factors that are linked to hospitals and healthcare facilities. Currently, many hospitals across the world are adopting advanced LED (light-emitting diode) lighting systems. This is because these systems have a notable impact on nearly all hospital functions.
LED lighting systems are popularly known for their capability to save money and energy. They can also enhance the performance of a hospital or healthcare facility in terms of worker job satisfaction and recovery time for patients. Lighting in hospitals and healthcare facilities can also reduce errors and accidents.
Both visitors and staff will feel safe in a well-lit facility while maintenance staff will have an easy time cleaning. With these advantages, hospitals and healthcare facilities will gain more financial benefits that surpass energy costs.
Various Factors Drive Today’s Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities
The design of healthcare and hospital facilities today depends on various factors. For example, some of the changes that the Affordable Care Act in the USA brought about were a connection between:
- The repayment rates that healthcare facilities receive
- Patient satisfaction
These factors are a clear indication of the importance of patient experience. Today, healthcare facilities are trying to reduce their spending by maximizing limited spaces and increased efficiency. Proper lighting technology can influence these areas, especially because healthcare and hospital facilities operate round the clock.
Artificial lighting can facilitate daily operations and this is where LED systems come in. A smart LED lighting system provides efficient light that caters to human behaviors and needs. Here are detailed reasons why lighting for hospitals and healthcare facilities is critical.
Enhances Performance
A light-emitting diode lighting system can expand usable space. Seeing that LED bulbs are long-lasting, healthcare facilities do not need more storage options to store extra bulbs. This means that hospitals can use the available space to store more critical items.
By adopting LED lighting, healthcare facilities will reduce maintenance times that staff would otherwise spend on fixing bulbs. Such convenience frees staff to focus on more crucial tasks. Energy savings is one of the benefits that hospitals and healthcare facilities gain from upgrading in LED lighting.
Light Can Promote Healing
Continued studies suggest that good lighting is connected to patient healing. McLaren Health Care System, located in Michigan installed smart LED lighting systems in some of their hospitals. They later found out that they could cut down noise levels by regulating the light. Blurring the lights in visitor and patient areas at specific times during the evening, indicated that patients needed to rest.
With proper lighting, nurses and doctors can perform better. Studies suggest that blurred lights during night shifts make medical and caregiving decision making difficult. Over half of registered nurses are aged 50 years. During this time, the human eye needs up to three times more light than a 25-year-old would.
Enough light is crucial to enhance their performance. Lighting can influence the level of stress and performance in the operating room, as well as the rate of errors in administering medication. Housekeeping staff at the McLaren Port Huron hospital reported that proper lighting helped them clean better. It’s worth mentioning that cleanliness in hospitals and healthcare facilities protects patients from internal infections.
Finally
High-quality light is critical for the proper functioning of hospitals and healthcare facilities. Apart from illuminating corridors, lighting can reduce stress and speed up patient recovery. Studies show that lighting is crucial for human functioning and can help both patients and staff in healthcare facilities. Sufficient lighting conditions are critical for the execution of visual tasks in healthcare centers and the elimination of errors.
