CONCEPTUALIZING AND ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL PRESS IN SPECIAL CARE UNITS FOR PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA (NURSING HOMES).
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee.
Published: 1996
Number of pages: 346
Subjects: Architecture.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.
Description: Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are progressive, irreversible diseases that gradually impair the cognitive intelligence, memory, and functional abilities of otherwise healthy individuals to the point where they require total and complete care by others. The pathological changes in dementia cause the neuronal paths in the brain to break down, making it increasingly difficult for the victims to interpret their environment. Recent research has indicated that as many as 70% of all residents in nursing homes suffer from confusion and/or dementia. The goal of this research is to develop and test a framework for describing and classifying those characteristics of the environment that relate to the impaired ability of people with dementia to receive, manage, and interpret stimuli, and to explore how these characteristics vary across a sample of six special care units (SCUs).

There are two distinct domains operating within the framework. First, drawing upon Lawton and Nahemow's Environmental Docility Model, which links individual competence with environmental press, this project has developed a more detailed articulation of environmental press in terms of seven distinct dimensions: quantity, quality, structure, predictability, salience, control and mobility.

Second, despite wide variations between different SCUs, a common theme in a significant proportion of the interventions introduced in SCUs is the need to address the impaired ability of people with dementia to receive, interpret, organize and appropriately act on environmental press. Thus, working from two models of cognitive processing, seven basic strategies for creating a supportive environment for this population were defined.

To test this framework, a multiple case study methodology was employed, incorporating numerous sources of data, to generate a comprehensive list of expressions of environmental press related to the dimensions of press and the strategies for interventions. An evaluation system was developed, enabling SCUs to be rated in terms of their ability to compensate for the impaired ability of people with dementia to receive, manage and interpret information from their environment. These ratings distill significant amounts of data into meaningful and manageable information about the environmental experience of these settings. Thus, the research has taken a largely undefined construct--environmental press--and articulated it through the discrete definition and assessment of myriad specific indicators.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1355.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE, 1996.

School code: 0263.