Dementia Inclusive Hospitals from a Universal Design Approach

Make your hospital design as accessible and dementia-friendly as possible

Universal design involves creating a built environment that is accessible to all, regardless of age, disability, or other factors. Applying these principles to hospital design, to ensure proper care for individuals with dementia, presents unique challenges.

This three-week course from Trinity College Dublin will equip you with all you need to know about dementia-friendly hospital design. By the end, you’ll be ready to create spaces that foster excellent quality of life.

Apply universal principles to every aspect of hospital design

This course starts with an overview of the principles that should be applied to a built environment intended for dementia care before looking at detailed guidance for specific areas of a hospital.

You’ll also learn more about dementia symptoms, related impairments, and how these impact the way someone experiences a care setting. With these insights. you’ll make better design decisions.

Explore key universal design issues

As the course progresses you’ll look more closely at the design issues that have the most impact on dementia care, including hospital layout and scale.

You’ll see that collaborating with people who have dementia is absolutely imperative, and you’ll be guided on creating helpful environments in key areas across a hospital.

Learn from universal and hospital design experts

This course is based on the Dementia Friendly Hospitals from a Universal Design Approach – Design Guidelines 2018, which were written by Trinity College Dublin and other stakeholders, and co-authored by the lead educator of this course.

With such a strong understanding of how the built environment affects dementia symptoms, you can trust the College to deliver material that will engage and show you how to make a real difference in people’s lives.

This course is designed for hospital groups, architects, design professionals, patient advocates, advisory groups, and anyone else interested in improving dementia care through universal design. No prior experience or qualifications are required.

This course is designed for hospital groups, architects, design professionals, patient advocates, advisory groups, and anyone else interested in improving dementia care through universal design. No prior experience or qualifications are required.

• Identify the symptoms of dementia and the impairments that can lead to disability.
• Explain the role and impact of the built environment in terms of providing support or presenting barriers for human performance, health, well-being, and participation.
• Discuss the importance of and methods for engagement and collaboration with people living with dementia (PLWD), family members in terms of designing inclusive environments.
• Assess the specific challenges for PLWD in the acute hospital setting.
• Describe Universal Design (UD) and how it can support dementia friendly design.
• Discuss the key dementia-friendly hospital design issues as set out in DFH-UD.
• Evaluate the hospital in terms of key spatial scales and key areas (e.g., Emergency Department, Inpatient Ward etc).
• Apply the key design issues along with specific guidance to various areas across the hospital.