Adapting the Egress Enabler for Caregiver-Assisted Evacuation in Paediatric Wards.
(2026) In LUTVDG/TVBB VBRM05 20261Division of Fire Safety Engineering
- Abstract
- In paediatric hospital wards, parents or caregivers who are physically capable are already present with their child when a fire emergency occurs. Yet existing approaches to hospital evacuation have either overlooked their potential role or treated them as additional occupants for staff to manage. If these caregivers could evacuate independently with their child, staff could direct their efforts toward patients who genuinely require their assistance. But whether they can do so depends not only on their ability but on what the ward environment demands of them, and this interaction has never been examined.
This thesis addresses this gap by reframing caregiver-assisted evacuation as a person–environment fit problem. It adapts the Egress... (More) - In paediatric hospital wards, parents or caregivers who are physically capable are already present with their child when a fire emergency occurs. Yet existing approaches to hospital evacuation have either overlooked their potential role or treated them as additional occupants for staff to manage. If these caregivers could evacuate independently with their child, staff could direct their efforts toward patients who genuinely require their assistance. But whether they can do so depends not only on their ability but on what the ward environment demands of them, and this interaction has never been examined.
This thesis addresses this gap by reframing caregiver-assisted evacuation as a person–environment fit problem. It adapts the Egress Enabler, an egressibility-based tool originally developed to assess self-evacuation for individuals with functional limitations, to a new type of occupant: the caregiver–child unit, whose constraints are not stable individual functional limitations but situational ones that arise from assisting a dependent child through the built environment. Through a conceptual analysis, five functional limitations of the caregiver–child unit and five environmental barrier areas were identified and translated into a qualitative assessment tool: a 24-item checklist, producing a two-dimensional barrier profile that reflects where barriers concentrate and which limitations are least supported by the environment. When applied illustratively to a paediatric ward, the framework produced outputs that were consistent with difficulties recognised by staff.
By making it possible to identify where the ward environment fails to support caregiver-assisted movement, this work takes a first step toward turning an overlooked presence into a recognised evacuation resource. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9230062
- author
- Labhiri, Hibat Allah LU
- supervisor
-
- Silvia Arias LU
- organization
- course
- VBRM05 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Egressibility, caregiver-assisted evacuation, paediatric ward, person–environment fit, Egress Enabler, situational functional limitations, qualitative assessment tool.
- publication/series
- LUTVDG/TVBB
- report number
- 5766
- other publication id
- LUTVDG/TVBB—5766--SE
- language
- English
- id
- 9230062
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-02 14:02:38
- date last changed
- 2026-06-02 14:02:38
@misc{9230062,
abstract = {{In paediatric hospital wards, parents or caregivers who are physically capable are already present with their child when a fire emergency occurs. Yet existing approaches to hospital evacuation have either overlooked their potential role or treated them as additional occupants for staff to manage. If these caregivers could evacuate independently with their child, staff could direct their efforts toward patients who genuinely require their assistance. But whether they can do so depends not only on their ability but on what the ward environment demands of them, and this interaction has never been examined.
This thesis addresses this gap by reframing caregiver-assisted evacuation as a person–environment fit problem. It adapts the Egress Enabler, an egressibility-based tool originally developed to assess self-evacuation for individuals with functional limitations, to a new type of occupant: the caregiver–child unit, whose constraints are not stable individual functional limitations but situational ones that arise from assisting a dependent child through the built environment. Through a conceptual analysis, five functional limitations of the caregiver–child unit and five environmental barrier areas were identified and translated into a qualitative assessment tool: a 24-item checklist, producing a two-dimensional barrier profile that reflects where barriers concentrate and which limitations are least supported by the environment. When applied illustratively to a paediatric ward, the framework produced outputs that were consistent with difficulties recognised by staff.
By making it possible to identify where the ward environment fails to support caregiver-assisted movement, this work takes a first step toward turning an overlooked presence into a recognised evacuation resource.}},
author = {{Labhiri, Hibat Allah}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
series = {{LUTVDG/TVBB}},
title = {{Adapting the Egress Enabler for Caregiver-Assisted Evacuation in Paediatric Wards.}},
year = {{2026}},
}