All patient rooms in hospitals should provide an acceptable environment for patients to recover and a good working environment for health care professionals who attend to them.

• The special purpose of an isolation room is to protect health care workers, other patients and visitors in a hospital from exposure to an airborne infectious agent in the event that an infectious patient is staying in the room.
• A principal design goal for an isolation room, then, should be to achieve and maintain an adequate level of airborne infection protection in the environment surrounding an infectious patient.
• In other words, to contain the airborne infectious material in such a way that the threat of exposure to health care personnel within the isolation room and others outside of the room is minimized.
• Ventilation is a key component of aerosol containment in isolation rooms