Environmental sustainability of hospital buildings – Literature review

Abstract

The present study intends to make an important contribution, with special acuity for the Portuguese case, which is still on a path of evolution in this area. The theme of sustainability emerged strongly in the 21st century, given the growing concerns of the international community with the environment, which is reflected in Health, Management and Accounting, and which produces effects, for what is currently relevant, in the construction of hospital buildings. The originality of our work consists, therefore, in this holistic and synergistic view of Health, Management, Accounting and even Engineering.

A systematic review of the literature is presented, focusing on empirical studies, published in the period 2003-2020, on environmental sustainability in hospital buildings. In this sense, we defined an action protocol and raised a research question, gathering data from the Google of Scholar, ProQuest, B-on databases, along with bibliographic sources available in university libraries. The research was organised around 4 (four) central themes, which we defined through keywords: environmental sustainability, hospital buildings, environmental accounting, hospital management, quality assessment in Health, with their respective synonyms. After analysing the bibliographic sources and carrying out the inclusion/exclusion process, 21 bibliographic sources (monographs, scientific articles, published records of conferences, reports and doctoral theses), in Portuguese, English and Spanish, were selected for the systematic review of the literature.

The results found in the analysis performed showed the answer to the research question initially formulated and the feasibility of the systematic literature review structure implemented.

This literature review aims to identify and systematise the research published in the context of the sustainability of hospital buildings, namely, to know the literature that analyses the impact of the construction of sustainable hospital buildings on the environment, on operating costs (water, energy, gas and waste) and the well-being of patients and health professionals, and how the sustainability of buildings should be considered in the assessment of quality in Health.