Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Privacy Needs When Visiting a Person With Alzheimer’s Disease: Family and Staff Expectations

Privacy Needs When Visiting a Person With Alzheimer’s Disease: Family and Staff Expectations Over the past decade, environmental psychologists and architects have combined efforts to create living environments that respond to the needs of persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Although they have defined privacy as a significant topic, we know little about the importance of physical privacy for family visitors to long-term care facilities. This exploratory study addressed this topic through in-depth interviews with 22 family and 26 staff members of 15 long-term care facilities. Thematic analysis indicates that families attempt to achieve privacy by personalizing their relative’s living space and by maintaining territorial control over personal objects. Both families and staff members must adapt to behaviors of persons with dementia that do not meet cultural norms. The most popular places for visiting were public and semipublic spaces, even when private areas were available. Implications for researchers, facility designers, and operators are presented. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Applied Gerontology SAGE

Privacy Needs When Visiting a Person With Alzheimer’s Disease: Family and Staff Expectations

Download PDF
17 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/privacy-needs-when-visiting-a-person-with-alzheimer-s-disease-family-zFooG6rXe6

References (35)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
Copyright © by SAGE Publications
ISSN
0733-4648
eISSN
1552-4523
DOI
10.1177/0733464803254339
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Over the past decade, environmental psychologists and architects have combined efforts to create living environments that respond to the needs of persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Although they have defined privacy as a significant topic, we know little about the importance of physical privacy for family visitors to long-term care facilities. This exploratory study addressed this topic through in-depth interviews with 22 family and 26 staff members of 15 long-term care facilities. Thematic analysis indicates that families attempt to achieve privacy by personalizing their relative’s living space and by maintaining territorial control over personal objects. Both families and staff members must adapt to behaviors of persons with dementia that do not meet cultural norms. The most popular places for visiting were public and semipublic spaces, even when private areas were available. Implications for researchers, facility designers, and operators are presented.

Journal

Journal of Applied Gerontology – SAGE

Published: Dec 1, 2003

There are no references for this article.