Abstract
Privacy is often overlooked in Hong Kong nursing homes with the majority of elderly residents living in shared bedrooms of three to five people. Only a few studies have used Bluetooth low energy indoor positioning systems to explore the relationship between privacy and social interaction among elderly residents. The study investigates the social behavioural patterns of elderly residents living in three-bed, four-bed, and five-bed rooms in a nursing home. Location data of 50 residents were used for the identification of mobility and social interaction patterns in relation to different degrees of privacy and tested for statistical significance. Privacy is found to have a weak negative correlation with mobility patterns and social behaviour, implying that the more privacy there is, the less mobility and more formal interaction is found. Residents who had more privacy did not spend more time in social space. Residents living in bedrooms that opened directly onto social space had higher social withdrawal tendencies, indicating the importance of transitional spaces between private and public areas. Friends’ rooms were used extensively by residents who had little privacy, however, the concept of friends’ rooms have rarely been discussed in nursing homes. There is evidence supporting the importance of privacy for social interaction. Future study directions include considering how other design factors, such as configuration and social space diversity, work with privacy to influence social interaction.
Highlights
The design of the physical environment has gained an increasing recognition as an important factor to facilitate meaningful interaction among older people with dementia living in nursing homes.Participating in meaningful social interaction with others is crucial in improving well-being and quality of life in people with dementia [1,2,3]
The advantages of private versus shared resident rooms has been a matter of debate in both hospital and nursing home settings, with some researchers and service providers advocating that the benefits of private rooms are self-evident, and others suggesting that private rooms are too expensive to build and operate [6,7]
This study aims to evaluate the effects of physical privacy on social behaviour in a nursing home to support the extent of existing evidence that
Summary
The design of the physical environment has gained an increasing recognition as an important factor to facilitate meaningful interaction among older people with dementia living in nursing homes.Participating in meaningful social interaction with others is crucial in improving well-being and quality of life in people with dementia [1,2,3]. The design of the physical environment has gained an increasing recognition as an important factor to facilitate meaningful interaction among older people with dementia living in nursing homes. The advantages of private versus shared resident rooms has been a matter of debate in both hospital and nursing home settings, with some researchers and service providers advocating that the benefits of private rooms are self-evident, and others suggesting that private rooms are too expensive to build and operate [6,7]. The literature suggests that private rooms are of tremendous importance for older adults and that elderly residents overwhelmingly prefer private rooms over shared rooms in residential settings [7,8,9,10,11], even if it was smaller in size [12]
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