Green Hospital Implementation in Health Aspects: A Systematic Review

A green hospital prioritizes health and sustainability by conserving energy, water, and materials. Improving structure siting, planning, development, service, repair, and disposal reduces health and environmental impacts. Hospitals save lives and promote health. Due to its mission, hospitals prioritize health. People go to hospitals because they want medical treatment, therefore, hospitals should be clean and comfortable. Previous researches state a well-designed hospital building may improve healing. Designers focus on green strategies to benefit hospital patients and staff. This paper is a systematic review of recent evidence on green hospitals and health aspects from Scopus, PubMed, EBSCO, and ProQuest databases. The data collection method was done through Zotero Reference Manager and searching for articles online with related keywords. The selected articles included studies that report on any elements of green design and health aspects in hospitals. 58 articles were found in this study that reported on green design aspects and health in a hospital setting. Green design aspects such as LEED, green building design, environmental sustainability, natural environment, green space, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, acoustic comfort, waste management, and water conservation are known to have a relationship with the staff comfort and satisfaction, patient comfort and satisfaction, productivity and performance, motivation, quality of care, quality of life, hospital-associated infection, physical health, physiological health, recovery, and safety. The green design aspects positively affect patient and staff health. Thus, implementing green design concepts in hospitals could enhance human health and the quality of care.