A Transdisciplinary Approach to Hospitality and Habitability in Healthcare Settings

This article intends to contribute to the theoretical work concerning the relationship between spaces/settings and user’s well-being in the context of healthcare organizations. Using a transdisciplinary approach anchored in psychosociology, the article stems from the conceptual contributions of Environmental Psychology – namely, Ulrich’s Theory of Supportive Design – and articulates it with the Sociology of engagements. Namely, the aim is to combine the conceptual patrimony from both fields to more acutely identify and differentiate the plurality of evaluative frameworks patients/users mobilize concerning how clinical spaces/settings should be configurated to safeguard their psychological well-being. Namely, two specific concepts from Sociology are integrated into the analysis: hospitality and habitability. We intend, thus, to elaborate the first proposal of a more nuanced conceptual model on person-environment relations that allows mitigating ambiguities identified when analyzing users’ evaluations of clinical spaces/settings. A deeper understanding of these relations can, in turn, favor patients’ resilience and health organizations’ sustainability.