One man turned nursing home design on its head when he created this stunning facility. An Ingenius and Functional Nursing Home Design for Your Inspiration. Norma who’s 92 had a particularly odd routine. Every night around 5, she stands up and tells the staff at her nursing home that she wanted to go home. When they asked why she just answers she wanted to go home to take care of her mom. Her mother, of course, had long since gone.
Behaviour like Norma’s is quite common for the elderly suffering from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia.
Walter, another man in the same assisted living facility, demanded breakfast from the staff every night around 7:30 PM
Inspired to make design changes
These are just some of the stories that inspired Jean Makesh, CEO of Lantern Assisted Living Facilities to form changes.
“I thought I knew plenty about elderly care. The more and longer I used to be spending with my clients, that’s once I realized, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got no clue.'”
Confusion is common in Alzheimer’s patients, but Makesh knew there had to be a way to reduce these conflicts. an enormous believer within the concept that the environment has an infinite effect on us, he started thinking big — and way outside the box.
“What if we design an environment that appears like outside?” he said. “What if I can have a sunrise and sunset inside the building? What if I’m ready to have the moon and stars come out? What if I build a unit that takes residents back to the ’30s and ’40s?”
That was just the start. He also researched music, aromatherapy, and grass carpets. the concept just flew of right the bat with no limitations. rather than rooms or units, each resident gets a “home” on a quiet little indoor street paying homage to the neighborhoods many of them grew up in.
Ingenius and Functional Nursing Home Design for Your Inspiration
All photos courtesy of Lantern.
Instead of a boring panel ceiling, residents look up and see a digital sky, which grows dimmer late in the day to help keep their biological clocks in tune.
Throughout the day, nature sounds and fresh aromas like peppermint or citrus are piped in.
Some studies have shown that this kind of aromatherapy may indeed have some merits for improving cognitive functioning in Alzheimer’s patients.
There’s even a little “main street” where residents can gather.
For Makesh, this isn’t just about making patients comfortable, though. He wants to change how we think about the endgame of severe dementia.
The insides of the rooms aren’t too shabby, either.
Makesh said one of the frustrating shortcomings of most nursing facilities is that they create conflicts with unnatural environments and schedules, and they try to solve them by throwing anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety medications at patients. In other words, when someone has severe dementia, we often give up on them. From there, they stop getting the engagement their brain needs to thrive.
Of course, we’re still a long way from a cure for Alzheimer’s.
But Makesh’s project shows that after we think strategically about changing the environment and concentrate on helping people re-learn essential self-care and hygiene skills, the near-impossible becomes possible.
“In five years, we’re visiting [be able to] rehabilitate our clients where they will live independently in our surroundings,” he said. “In 10 years, we’re visiting be ready to send them back home.”
He knows it’s a challenging goal. Whether he’ll meet it remains to be seen. In the meantime, he’s proud to own one of the few places that offers something pretty rare in cases of severe dementia: hope.
Source: https://www.upworthy.com/one-man-turned-nursing-home-design-on-its-head-when-he-created-this-stunning-facility
