Making It Home Through Low-Cost Changes to the Physical Environment
/Making it Home Through Low Cost Changes to the Physical Environment
Your nursing home is just ‘home’ to the residents who live there.
This excerpt offers guidance on low cost changes to the physical environment that can help residents be more at home, whether their stay is short or long term. It draws from the research of Judith Carboni, a nurse gerontologist, who saw alarming parallels between the experience of homeless people on the streets of Boston and the experience of people living in nursing homes in 1987.
She documented the “psychic despair” among nursing home residents who felt a sense of displacement in their physical environment. This clip describes her research and uses pictures of residents’ bedrooms, dining methods, shower rooms, and common areas, to demonstrate the range of ways the physical environment can support residents in being at home.