Dementia Friendly Hospitals from a Universal Design Approach

Research Pillar: Healthy and Inclusive Places

Project Name/Title/Acronym: Dementia Friendly Hospitals from a Universal Design Approach

Funding Body: Health Research Board (National Dementia Office and the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design funded the printing of the guidelines)

Project Partners: TrinityHaus, Tallaght University Hospital, O’Connell Mahon Architects, HSE Capital and Estates, the National Dementia Office, and the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.

Project Timeframe: 2017-2018

Key Output(s): Dementia Friendly Hospital Design Guidelines
                          Dementia Friendly Hospitals Research Report
                          Dementia Friendly Hospitals Audit Tool

Project Description:

For many patients and their families, the hospital is a challenging setting due to the busy, unfamiliar, and stressful nature of the environment. For a person with dementia the hospital experience can be exacerbated by cognitive impairment and behavioural or psychological symptoms, and can therefore prove to be a frightening, distressing, and disorientating place. In response to these issues, research has been completed to investigate dementia friendly design for acute care hospitals. This has examined how the physical hospital environment might provide a better experience for people with dementia, and how hospitals can be designed to enable family members and carers to provide support for the person with dementia throughout their visit to the hospital. This research underpins these guidelines to provide detailed guidance in relation to dementia specific design issues and the Universal Design of dementia friendly hospitals.

The guidelines are applicable to existing and new-build projects, with the aim being that they can be used by design professionals, healthcare staff, and lay people. Hopefully, this applicability to both existing and new build will contribute to both incremental improvements of existing settings, and a step-change in how we design hospitals into the future.

This project looked at internal air quality therefore addressing some issues ‘Healthy environments’ and also covered issues around heating and energy conservation and thus linked with ‘Sustainable and climate responsive communities’. Through the research and engagement process adopted, the project also supported the 4th TrinityHaus pillar - Co-creation, collaboration and stakeholder engagement

Nationally, this project supports the ‘National Dementia Strategy. Internationally, it supports various UN Sustainable Development Goals as indicated below:

Publications:

• Grey T, Xidous D, Kennelly S, Mahon S, Mannion V, de Freine P, Dockrell D, de Siún A, Murphy N, Craddock G, O’Neill D. (2018). Dementia Friendly Hospitals from a Universal Design Approach: Design Guidelines. (See See here.

Contact details – for more information contact Tom Grey, tom.grey@tcd.ie