Healthcare facilities settings: an overview of environmentally-induced stress on health

Abstract

The role of FM practitioners is to create an environment that sustains the primary objectives of the organisation. In managing healthcare facilities, the aim is to serve the healthcare users with efficient and quality medical environments in order to enhance the healing process. However, dysfunction that exists in environmental design is one of the issues often faced by the healthcare FM practitioners these days. Psychological stress is viewed as a consequence of design-behaviour dysfunction when the existing environmental design can no longer fit the need of users. With the possibility of certain environmental features to act as the sources of stressors, it is vital for FM practitioners to discover those features from the surrounding environment that appear to be harmful to the healthcare users. This paper provides an overview of the effect of the surrounding environment on stress. The association between environmentally induced-stress and the impacts of health is further discussed. Lastly, the application of evidence-based practice (EBP) is suggested in order to further the understanding for the association and intervention between environmental stressors and clinical outcomes.