Case Study: St. John’s Long Term Care Design and the Delivery of Care

St. John’s Long Term Care Facility, occupied in 2014, is comprised of two residences joined by a centre block. Each unit house a mixture of bedroom types: private, semi- private and double rooms. Grant will overview the design concept and intentions for the facility Special design features include a wandering loop and outside contained garden accessible to residents with dementia requiring protective care. The facility includes space for recreation therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and spiritual care. As well, there is a large recreation area with a games room and exterior garden for young adults with severe physical disabilities.

Art will overview the impacts of design on patient care and staff in transitioning and adapting to this new facility. A Post Occupancy Evaluation was conducted with the patients, and staff. Observations for private room accommodation included: more time for nurses to travel across long distances; more time to feed and bath patients in each individual room; loneliness and depression needs to be monitored more closely to ensure that private rooms do not contribute to loneliness and depression; less opportunity for non-caregiver interaction (i.e. with visiting family members). Art will overview how lessons learned in St. John’s LTC and can be shared to improve care and how the existing design can be ‘tweaked’ to address operational deficiencies.