An Australian study has evaluated various functional characteristics of the RediRoom, a temporary isolation room designed for single patient use. The mixed methods approach involved video recording, interviews, and objective temperature and humidity measurements within a crossover intervention study, concluding that the RediRoom had similar functional performance to performing patient care in an open plan area.

Single rooms are in short supply in many parts of the world, especially in the NHS. The RediRoom provides a temporary single room that can be used for contact or droplet isolation of patients. It is designed to be used to provide additional isolation capacity for individual patients in inpatient hospital settings, and also to provide temporary single rooms for patient triage in emergency situations.

In this study, the RediRoom was evaluated in a simulated clinical ward environment. Participants undertook a range of clinical nursing activities in the RediRoom or in a control area, including transferring patients, administration of medications, measurement of observations, performing an aseptic technique, bed bathing a patient, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A network analysis of staff movements in the room, and staff feedback via interviews and a questionnaire were used to evaluate the functionality of the RediRoom vs. control area. Also, temperature and humidity was measured in the RediRoom and control area.

The time taken and the number of movement required to complete the clinical nursing activities was broadly similar in the RediRoom and control area. A network analysis of the two activities that involved the most individual movements showed that there was close similarity in the pattern of movements in the RediRoom and control area. Recurring themes from interviews with staff were a sense of restriction, temperature, and management of critically ill patients. However, it is important to note that the RediRoom was not compared against another single room, but against an open plan area. It is likely that the sense of restriction and temperature themes would be less prominent if the RediRoom was compared to an isolation room. There was a slight increase in temperature in the RediRoom compared with the control room, of around 0.5°C.

Overall, the RediRoom had similar functional performance to performing patient care in an open plan area. The study focussed entirely on any impact that the RediRoom would have on functional performance of clinical nursing tasks, and did not quantify the main benefit of the RediRoom, in terms of reducing infection prevention and control risk, which is another story altogether…