How Negative Air Machines Can Improve Hospital Care

What is a Negative Pressure Room?

Negative pressure rooms have lower air pressure than surrounding areas, allowing fresh air to enter enclosed or quarantined spaces. These rooms prevent disease and dirt particles from escaping in the airflow to other rooms, and they are often used in hospitals and isolation facilities where patients have been infected with dangerous airborne diseases, such as SARS, COVID-19, tuberculosis, and measles. Negative pressure rooms are accomplished with negative air machines, which control the pressure and quality of air within a given room.

Prevent Airborne Disease Spreads

By stopping the transfer of air particles from one room to another, hospitals and isolation facilities have the opportunity to prevent airborne disease spreads. Negative air pressure rooms eliminate the risk that contaminated air particles from an infected patient will enter other rooms, greatly reducing the potential for a mass outbreak in a caring institution. One outbreak of an infectious disease can quickly lead to a hospital becoming overrun with ill and dying patients. As such, negative air pressure rooms are a responsible and ethical investment.

Control Air Quality

Negative air pressure rooms also allow hospitals and isolation facilities to control air quality. As negative air pressure rooms allow the flow of clean air from other areas of the institution, patients are provided with clean air from uncontaminated areas of the building, or even outside, if designed accordingly. In addition, negative air pressure rooms used for smoking areas can help to protect vulnerable patients nearby while their loved ones are free to wait.

Healthcare Worker & Patient Safety

Negative air pressure rooms protect both healthcare worker and patient safety, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disease contamination has led to dramatic numbers of hospital staff and patients becoming seriously ill or dying during the pandemic, especially in hospitals where the high numbers of infected patients make it difficult to purify the air. Negative air pressure machines can help to mitigate this situation and make the safest conditions possible for all occupants of the building. COVID-19 is a dangerous threat to healthcare workers, patients, and the broader community, which makes negative air pressure rooms an essential and moral investment.

Overall, negative pressure rooms are a key investment for hospitals and isolation facilities because they help to prevent the spread of contagions through their control of air pressure and quality, and because they offer benefits to healthcare worker and patient safety. Any airborne disease deserves the utmost precaution, and, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an ethical responsibility to protect patients, staff, and the community from outbreaks with negative pressure rooms.