sairastuvan

Sairastuva is a Finnish term referring to a ward or infirmary within a hospital or municipal sickhouse, intended for the accommodation and care of sick people. The word is a compound from sickness-related roots and conveys the idea of a room or house for ill persons. The genitive form sairastuvan is used to show possession, for example in phrases describing the facilities of a particular sairastuva.

In modern Finnish healthcare, the term sairastuva is largely historical; current inpatient facilities more commonly use osasto (ward) or yksikkö (unit) to describe organized inpatient areas. Sairastuvat appeared in older hospital buildings and parish infirmaries, especially in rural areas, where several beds were often arranged in shared rooms under nursing staff rather than in more segmented department structures.

Historically, a sairastuva typically consisted of dormitory-style patient rooms, with a central nurses’ station and shared sanitation facilities. The design and operation of these wards reflected the era’s standards for patient care, hygiene, and isolation; in some facilities, dedicated spaces for isolating contagious diseases were included. As hospital organization evolved toward more specialized departments and standardized terminology, the term sairastuva gradually gave way to newer expressions for inpatient spaces.

Today, sairastuva is primarily encountered in historical descriptions, archival records, or discussions of old hospital architecture in Finland. It remains a useful concept for understanding how inpatient care was structured in the past and how terminology has shifted within Finnish healthcare.