Abstract
This present research is the sequel of the report <Suggestion for a Conceptual Framework> which appeared in this journal 12 (1) 1989. The purpose of this report is to make it clear how patients feel about their territory and privacy in their rooms, especially who are sharing the room with other patients, and is to obtain the few fundamental knowledge which is important subject to give support to patients' daily life for nursing care.
In this report we defined “territory” and “privacy” as follows:
Territory ; personalised space or extent of which patients feel their own space among others
Privacy ; the state in which a patient employs psychological barriers to control unwanted intrusion. (Westin. 1977)
The results are shown below:
1. How patients perceive their territory was affected by a location of beds.
2. There was a common tendency of preference about a location of beds. Compared with the relations between the patients' feelings about their territory and the preference about a location of beds, it has been considered that patients hesitatingly recognised their territory each other in their room.
3. Degree of privacy perceived by patients correlated with some factors such as patients' charactor, structure of their rooms, and states of patients. From the fact, it can be considered that privacy is one of the most important to patients' life during stay in the hospital.
4. Quality of privacy varied according to the situation of patients' daily life from time to time.
