HBN guidance sets out key principles

With an ageing population in many countries, health and social care providers are under growing pressure to improve the quality and safety of care environments for older people, and ensure they are fit-for-purpose for caring for those with age-related conditions, including dementia. Health Building Note 08-02: Dementia-friendly health and social care environments, recently published, is the first HBN to offer specific guidance on the subject. Here Loughborough University research associates, Efthimia Pantzartzis and Federica Pascale, and Andrew Price, who is Professor of Project Management at the University, explain the background to  the new HBN, and offer insights into its structure and content. June’s HEJ reported on 115 Department of Health-funded pilot projects undertaken throughout England in 2013-2014 aimed at creating more ‘dementia-friendly’ environments in health and social care settings implemented under the DH Capital Programme, Improving the environment of care for people with dementia.The results and findings helped shape the new HBN guidance.

Dementia is an ‘umbrella term’ used to describe a range of organic symptoms that occur when the brain is affected by certain diseases or conditions. These symptoms relate to deterioration in cognitive function, behavioural changes, and functional limitations, such as memory loss, confusion, mood and personality changes, and problems with planning and performing tasks in the right order.

According to the World Health Organization,¹ ‘Dementia is a syndrome due to disease of the brain, usually of a chronic or progressive nature, in which there is disturbance of multiple cortical functions, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. Consciousness is not clouded. Impairments of cognitive function are commonly accompanied by, and occasionally preceded by, deterioration in emotional control, social behaviour, or motivation. Dementia is caused by a variety of diseases and injuries that primarily or secondarily affect the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease or stroke’. Dementia mainly affects elderly people; however it is an abnormal condition, and not part of normal brain ageing.