ASHRAE Journal - July 2019 - 10

TECHNICAL FEATURE

Thermal Comfort in
Health-Care Settings
BY RODRIGO MORA, PH.D., P.ENG., ASSOCIATE MEMBER ASHRAE; MICHAEL METEYER, P.E., MEMBER ASHRAE

Good indoor environmental quality in health-care facilities supports patient care and
staff satisfaction.1 A fundamental challenge in assessing thermal comfort in healthcare settings is providing comfortable conditions for diverse medical services and
diverse concurrent types of occupants. This article sheds light onto the challenges
involved in assessing thermal comfort in health-care facilities and illustrates with an
example the assessment of the thermal comfort of nurses in a hospital ward.
Thermal comfort is a subjective expression of our
minds regarding the level of satisfaction with the thermal environment. As indicated in Figure 1, the conditions for
thermal comfort involve a combination of physics, physiology, and psychology expressed in terms of thermal
sensation, thermal acceptability and satisfaction, and
thermal preference. Thermal comfort is assessed in the
ﬁeld using objective measurements of the indoor environment combined with the corresponding subjective
responses from the representative occupants. However,
as indicated in Figure 1, contextual health-care factors
inﬂuence the conditions for thermal comfort and occupants' comfort perception.

The Health-Care Context
HVAC systems in health-care facilities provide a
broad range of vital functions to support populations
who are uniquely vulnerable to health, ﬁre, and safety
hazards. Such facilities typically require large amounts

of outdoor air, air change rates, and established airdistribution patterns within spaces to control the propagation of potentially infectious pathogens and protect
procedures and products from environmental contamination.1 Despite the complex HVAC requirements in
health-care facilities, thermal comfort is still an indoor
environmental priority. A comfortable environment has
a signiﬁcant role in facilitating patient recovery,2,3 while
enabling medical staff to perform at peak levels.1
Table 14 identiﬁes three groups of occupants in health
care as well as speciﬁc factors affecting thermal comfort
for each group. For example, the medical staff usually
have varied control over the thermal environment and
limited possibilities for personal thermal adaptation.
Patients or their caregivers, at times, have individual
room thermal control and in most situations, patients
will be able to adapt their clothing and bedding.
Table 1 identiﬁes other health-care related factors that
may inﬂuence the thermal acceptability by occupants.

Rodrigo Mora, Ph.D., P.Eng., is faculty in the building science graduate program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Vancouver, BC, Canada, and a voting member of
SSPC 55, Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy. Michael Meteyer, P.E., is a mechanical engineering manager at ERDMAN, Madison, Wis., and a member of TC 9.6
Healthcare Facilities, and SSPC 170, Ventilation of Health Care Facilities.
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ASHRAE Journal - July 2019

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