Evaluation of Physical Environments in Dementia Care Units

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the development of the physical Environment Rating Scale and its use in evaluating dementia care physical environments. The main objective in developing the scale was to evaluate how the physical environment prohibited or promoted staff in the provision of dementia care. The scale was tested using five trained registered nurses who had at least one year dementia care experience. Using Kendall Tau B, the inter‐reliability coefficients for five raters ranged between .65 and .96 indicating an acceptable level of reliability. Test re‐test reliability was assessed using two raters who showed perfect reliability. It was concluded that the rating scale was a valuable tool in understanding the impact of the physical environment in care provision and assisted in the development of strategies to improve the physical environment.