Designing a Dementia Friendly Environment for Person-Centered Care

Running head: DEMENTIA ENVIRONMENT
Dementia Environment
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1DEMENTIA ENVIRONMENT
Introduction- dementia friendly environment can be described as the user friendly
resource for the families, carers and service providers with dementia. The resources are
originally developed in an aged care facility. However, it is important to mention that the advice
and information is equally important that helps to create an environment which is supportive,
inclusive and friendly for the people with dementia. The environment can be set in a public space
or shop, backyard, private home, community health service, hospital, residential care setting (Lin
& Lewis, 2015). This study emphasizes on designing a dementia friendly environment that will
support the person centred care. This study will also compare two videos that are based on the
two different of care providing environment to the dementia patients.
The two different videos are the documentaries that emphasize on the CNN’s World
Untold stories of a Dementia village and another video is on Anita’s stay in Nursing home. The
first video is hosted by Dr Gupta who travels to Hogeway which is a small village in Weeesp,
Netherlands. The place is called a dementia village where every resident is suffering from
dementia. Dr Gupta takes interview of the chief manager of dementia village to give a detailed
information about how the everyday business carried out in the dementia village. The strength of
this video is that at the beginning of the dementia village a summary of the benefits, positive
aspects of the dementia village is highlighted. The host gave an entire brief of what the place is
and how the dementia affected people carry out their daily lives. The weakness of the video is
that it emphasized entirely on the benefits of a dementia village and the plight of the people
suffering from dementia is not taken into account. It has also been identified that the dementia
affected people are free to roam in the village and there is no attendant that will take care of the
affected person during the times of need (YouTube, 2018a).

2DEMENTIA ENVIRONMENT
In the second video, here Anita is the host of the documentary and showcased how an old
age care facility actually is from the perspective of a patient. Anita is a host and a television
presenter and she voluntarily attempted for 2-week long stay in a nursing home. In this video she
showcased how she immerses herself and considers the place to be her home. She presents the
experiences from the perspective of a person who is staying and growing old in Singapore. The
strength of the video lies in the uniqueness with which it is approached. The host here stays with
the patients and shares the live footage of how the aged adults interact with one another and with
Anita as well. This video is able to bring forward the how it feels for caregiver and the carers to
stay with the aged people and how they carry out their life. The weakness of the video lies in the
fact that the video provided an account of experiences which is just 2-week long and it failed to
provide a detailed account of the plight of the old age entirely (YouTube, 2018b).
Design of a Dementia friendly facility- The dementia friendly facility will have a person
centred care approach so that the elderly patients can experience a meaning and a high quality of
life, value for people and purpose of life. A different community can be created for the dementia
affected patients so that they can lead a healthy and autonomous life along under the supervision
of the carers. Location of the home should be done in a way so that the dementia affected patients
can live in an environment as if they are living in their own community and in their own home.
The familiarity will help the patients to retain the long term memory and at the same time will
also experience the short term memory loss (Waller & Masterson, 2015). The design aspect will
include following aspects: participatory design- This will include all the relevant stakeholder in
the design process so that the needs and the preferences of the dementia affected patients will be
understood and included in the plan. Familiar design- it will help the students to have design and
the location of the circulation routes. Personalisation- the touch of personalization will help the