Which rooms count as patient areas? The full list in AS/NZS 3003

AS/NZS 3003:2018 lists the kinds of rooms that are patient areas in Clause 2.2.4. A room on the list is wired as a body-protected area (or cardiac-protected, for the few rooms where a direct connection to the heart is possible) when mains-powered medical equipment is applied to patients in it. The list, in the standard’s order, is at the end of this page.

Two things people miss. First, doctors’ consulting rooms and allied health rooms are on the list, which is why many electricians treat every consult room as a patient area. Under the 2018 edition the classification follows the procedures done in the room: a consult room used only for talking and examination, with no mains-powered equipment applied to the patient, can be recorded as not a patient area. That decision is the practice’s, with input from clinicians and the electrician, and it goes in the classification record with the reason.

Second, corridors, waiting rooms and offices are not on the list. If a room changes use later, from a consult room to a treatment room say, it is reclassified, wired, tested and signed before it is used that way. The standard’s list:

• Accident and emergency wards
• Allied health care providers, such as chiropractic, physiotherapy, optometry and naturopathic
• Anaesthetic bays
• Audiometry rooms
• Blood collection areas
• Day procedure theatres
• Delivery suites
• Dental surgeries
• Dermatology rooms
• Doctors’ consulting rooms
• Endoscopy theatres and procedure rooms
• General medical and surgical wards
• High dependency wards
• Imaging rooms
• Nurseries
• Operating theatres intended for non-cardiac surgery
• Patient examination rooms for outpatients
• Plasmapheresis areas
• Plaster rooms
• Recovery areas or wards associated with operating theatres and imaging rooms
• Respiratory function laboratories
• Resuscitation bays
• Stress test rooms
• Treatment rooms
• Ultrasound rooms