Jafarifiroozabadi and teammates build on the body of literature linking daylight and window views in hospitals to positive effects on patient wellbeing. The team shares that they probed “the impact of access to daylight vs. window views on CICU [cardiac intensive care unit] patients’ LOS [length of stay in the hospital]. . . . patients receiving mechanical ventilation in rooms with access to daylight and window views had shorter LOS durations . . . than those in windowless rooms. Sensitivity analysis for a subset of patients with LOS ≤3 days revealed that parallel bed placement to the [full-height, south-facing] windows and providing access to both daylight and window views significantly reduced their LOS compared to windowless rooms in the unit. . . . parallel bed placement to the [full-height, south-facing] window significantly reduced LOS in this patient subset for those with an experience of delirium . . . dementia . . . anxiety history . . . obesity . . . and those receiving palliative care . . . or mechanical ventilation.”
Roxana Jafarifiroozabadi, Anjali Joseph, Williams Bridges, and Andrea Franks. “The Impact of Daylight and Window Views on Length of Stay Among Patients with Heart Disease: A Retrospective Study in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.” Journal of Intensive Medicine, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jointm.2022.11.002