An Empirical Examination of Nursing Units in China Based on Nurse Experience

Objectives: To create opportunities to increase nursing staff’s satisfaction and operational efficiency and eventually improve nurses’ experiences through better design in unit layout. Background: The majority of research performed on nursing units in China only focused on the spatial design itself, and few studies examined the nursing unit empirically based on nurses’ experience. Nursing units need to be designed with understanding nurses’ behavior and experience in China. Method: A mixed-method approach was conducted in four double-corridor nursing units in China. Observation and interview data were collected to explore how physical environments for managing administrative duties, medications, and caring patient were used in nursing units. Results: The most frequent activities were communication, medication, and patient-care activities. The places in which nurses spent the most of theirs working times were the nurse station (NS), patient room, workstation on wheels (WoW), and medication room. The important clinical work spaces were the patient room, NS, WoW, medication room, doctor’s office, disposal room, examining room, and back corridor. The important traffic linkages were between NS and medication room, patient room and WoW, and medication room and patient room. Conclusions: This article revealed the frequency of nurse activities; how they spent their time; how they use the clinical spaces; identified important clinical spaces, linkages, and driver of inefficiency in nursing work and nursing unit design; and finally generated recommendations for double-corridor nursing unit design in China which can be used by medical planner, hospital administrator.