Heat protection in hospitals : Identifying feasible measures to reduce the heat burden at the workplace

Due to climate change, an increase in mean air temperature and the number of hot days is pro-jected for Germany. In this context, hospitals are particularly impacted by the increase in heat-related diseases due to the increased workload and challenging working conditions. Therefore, protective measures for hospital employees need to be implemented. However, since recommendations for heat protection and model heat action plans (HAPs) for hospitals have only recently been published, this thesis aims to identify recommended measures and assess their practical feasibility. Therefore, the primary research question is: What are the most feasible measures for reducing the indoor heat burden in hospitals? Given the heat burden on hospital staff, the focus in answering the research question is on measures for employees. For this purpose, literature on available recommendations was compared and seven expert in-terviews with heat protection officers from hospitals were conducted. The interviews were then qualitatively analyzed according to Braun & Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis. Additionally, studies on the effectiveness of selected measures for employees were analyzed. While the comparison of recommended measures showed that the focus was rather on patients compared to employees, this distribution was also reflected in the HAPs of the interviewed hospitals. Moreover, the expert interviews showed that the implementation of these measures is still in its early stages. This was mainly explained by limited financial resources, a shortage of employees, and a lack of awareness regarding the need to adapt to heat. Factors reported to support the implementation of heat protection are cooperation within and between hospitals as well as the binding requirements of the Technical Regulations for Workplaces. Moreover, or-ganizational measures that require little money and bureaucracy were named as easy to imple-ment. While studies showed that the adjustment of work clothes and working hours can reduce employees' heat burden, resource limitations were identified as a challenge for this. Overall, the results of the thesis can be used by hospitals to plan heat protection measures, as well as by political decision-makers to provide the needed support for the implementation of model HAPs.