Proposing a Systematic Assessment Tool for Evaluating the Architectural Variables of Dementia-Friendly Design in Nursing Homes

Abstract

The world’s aging population is growing rapidly; consequently, the population with dementia is also significantly increasing. The relationship between the built environment and Health and Care Outcomes (HCOs) of people with dementia has been established by a considerable amount of research on dementia-friendly design. To implement the findings of studies on dementia-friendly design, an assessment tool of Architectural Variables (AVs) is required to evaluate the effectiveness of the design of built environments, such as healthcare facilities for people with dementia. Despite the existing assessment tools and studies conducted in the field of dementia-friendly design, systematically evaluating the AVs is not possible in practice, because of some challenges discussed in this paper. To address these challenges, this literature-based paper examines the capabilities of an assessment tool (toolkit) to systematically evaluate the dementia-friendly design of nursing homes. For this, three main aspects of the assessment tool including (a) the development base, (b) the users, and (c) the capability of being kept up to date are investigated to find out how they could contribute to the creation of a systematic assessment tool. This paper also proposes a methodology for the development of an assessment tool in three steps. First, the AVs and HCOs, and their interactions should be organised in a database. Second, a structured database of data collection methods and the available data should be developed. Third, the development of analytical relations should be done to provide assessments.