Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Jul 10, 2025)
Date Submitted: Jul 8, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Patient Preferences in Inpatient Psychiatry: Structural Elements for Optimal Care
ABSTRACT
Background:
Architectural and structural hospital design significantly influences psychiatric inpatient care outcomes, yet patient perspectives on these elements remain underexplored.
Objective:
This study aimed to identify structural requirements for psychiatric hospital design from the patient perspective.
Methods:
A hybrid questionnaire survey was conducted at the University Psychiatric Clinics (UPK) Basel in September 2023, targeting former inpatients from all wards of our clinic. The survey examined psychiatric service utilization and explored user preferences for structural elements transdiagnostically through closed- and open-ended questions.
Results:
The final sample included 604 respondents (response rate: 19.1%). Among them, 49% (282) reported disturbances related to their room, while 51% (294) had no complaints. Privacy concerns, lack of withdrawal opportunities, nighttime comfort, and sleep quality emerged as key issues. A single private room was rated as "very important" (10/10 on a Likert scale) by 64% of respondents. The surrounding park environment (74%, 10/10) and access to outdoor areas (75%, 10/10) were also highly valued. Regarding preferred treatment settings, 54.1% favored inpatient care, followed by 15.9% for day clinics and 17.8% for outpatient care. Alternative models such as home treatment (8.4%), night clinics (2.8%), and telemedicine (1.1%) were less frequently endorsed.
Conclusions:
Psychiatric inpatients strongly prioritize inpatient care with single-occupancy rooms and ample access to green spaces and outdoor areas. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating patient preferences into hospital design to enhance psychiatric care environments.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.